THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

GIFT 


Qlri  \J.O.  LibrGry 


-/!/$(  2 


CRITICAL 


AND 


MISCELLANEOUS 


ESSAYS. 


T.   BABINGTON   MACAULAY. 


Ntia  anir  ^thistis  ^Utim, 


VOL.  I. 


NEW  YORK : 
D.   APPLETON  AND  COMPANY, 

846    &    348    BROADWAY. 
M.D00aLTn. 


Al 


PUBLISHER'S  NOTICE. 


The  very  general  and  high  commendation  be- 
stowed by  the  press  and  the  community  upon  the 
American  edition  of  Macaulay's  Miscellaneous  Writ- 
ings has  induced  the  publisher  to  issue  a  new 
edition  embracing  the  remainder  of  the  articles  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  and  several  articles  written 
and  published  while  the  author  was  at  college. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 


The  following  volumes  contain  the  miscellaneous 
writings  of  Thomas  Babington  Macaulay,  consisting 
of  various  essays  which  have  appeared  in  the  English 
Reviews,  principally  the  Edinburgh,  since  the  year 
1825,  printed  from  a  list  corrected  by  himself.  His 
articles  have  been  universally  admired,  both  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  for  their  vivid  eloquence,  exten- 
sive learning,  and  splendour  of  illustration ;  and  the 
publisher  has  had  reason  to  believe,  that  a  collected 
edition  of  them  would  be  received  with  favour  by 
the  American  public.  It  has  been  his  aim  to  pre- 
sent them  in  a  form  worthy  of  the  high  merit  of  their 
contents. 

Mr.  Macaulay  has  not  been  exclusively  occupied 
with  the  literary  productions  which  have  given  him 
so  brilliant  a  reputation.  He  has  been  hardly  less 
distinguished  in  public  life.  He  came  into  Parlia- 
ment shortly  before  the  debates  upon  the  Reform  Bill, 
and  his  speeches,  especially  upon  that  question,  were 
highly  eloquent,  vigorous,  and  effective.  He  resided 
for  some  time  in  India,  in  a  lucrative  and  responsible 
official  capacity.    He  returned  to  England  about  three 

years  since,  and  is  now  a  Member  of  Parliament  for 
1*  6 


6  ADVERTISEMENT. 

Edinburgli,  and  is  also  Secretary  at  War,  which 
gives  him  a  seat  in  the  cabinet.  He  is  in  the  prime 
of  life,  and  we  may  indulge  the  hope  that  the  litera- 
ture of  his  language  may  be  enriched  by  further  con- 
tributions from  his  pen.  Living  in  another  hemi- 
sphere, we  should  regret  to  see  his  great  powers  of 
varied  attainments  wholly  absorbed  in  politics — in 
employments  which  many  others,  probably,  can  dis- 
charge as  well,  and  which  occupy  his  time  and 
thoughts  to  the  exclusion  of  those  literary  pursuits, 
in  some  departments  of  which  no  one  can  dispute  the 
palm  with  him. 

Boston,  May,  1840, 


CONTENTS  OF  VOL.  I. 


Milton 9 

Edinburgh  Review.— No.  LXXXIV. 
Machiavelli 6G 

Edinburgh  Review. — No.  XC. 

Dryden 102 

Edinburgh  Review.— No.  XCIII. 

History 145 

Edinburgh  Review.— No.  XCIV. 

Hallam's  Constitutional  History 188 

Edinburgh  Review. — No.  XCV. 

SouTHEY^s  Colloquies  on  Society 275 

Edinburgh  Review. — No.  C. 

Moore's  Life  of  Lord  Byron 320 

Edinburgh  Review. — No.  CVI. 

Southey's  Edition  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  . .  .354 

Edinburgh  Review. — No.  CVIII. 

Appendix 369 


MACAULAT'S  MISCELLANIES. 


Miltnn. 


[Edinburgh  Bevieio.] 

ToWABDS  the  close  of  the  year  1823,  Mr.  Lemon,  Deputy 
Keeper  of  the  State  Papers,  in  the  course  of  his  researches 
among  the  presses  of  his  office,  met  with  a  large  Latin  manu- 
script. With  it  were  found  corrected  copies  of  the  foreign 
despatches  written  by  Milton,  while  he  filled  the  office  of 
Secretary,  and  several  papers  relating  to  the  Popish  Trials 
and  the  Rye-house  Plot.  The  whole  was  wrapped  up  in  an 
envelope,  superscribed  "  To  Mr.  Skinner,  Ilerchant."  On 
examination,  the  large  manuscript  proved  to  be  the  long  lost 
Essay  on  the  Doctrines  of  Christianity,  which,  according  to 
"Wood  and  Toland,  Milton  finished  after  the  Restoration,  and 
deposited  with  Cyriac  Skinner.  Skinner,  it  is  well  known, 
held  the  same  political  opinions  with  his  illustrious  friend. 
It  is  therefore  probable,  as  Mr.  Lemon  conjectures,  that  he 
may  have  fallen  under  the  suspicions  of  the  government 
during  that  persecution  of  the  Whigs  which  followed  the 
dissolution  of  the  Oxford  Parliament,  and  that,  in  conse- 
quence of  a  general  seizure  of  his  papers,  this  work  may  have 
been  brought  to  the  office  in  which  it  had  been  found.     But 

*  Joannis  Miltoni,  Angli,  de  Doctrina  Christiana  libri  duo  posthumi. 
A  Treatise  on  Christian  Doctrine,  compiled  from  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures alone.  By  John  Milton.  Translated  from  the  original  by 
Charles  R.  Sumner,  M.  A.,  &c.  &c.     1825. 

9 


10  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

whatever  the  adventures  of  the  manuscript  may  have  been, 
no  doubt  can  exist,  that  it  is  a  genuine  relic  of  the  great 
poet. 

Mr.  Sumner,  who  was  commanded  by  his  majesty  to  edit 
and  translate  the  treatise,  has  acquitted  himself  of  this  task 
in  a  manner  honourable  to  his  talents  and  to  his  character. 
His  version  is  not  indeed  very  easy  or  elegant;  but  it  is 
entitled  to  the  praise  of  clearness  and  fidelity.  His  notes 
abound  with  interesting  quotations,  and  have  the  rare  merit 
of  really  elucidating  the  text.  The  preftice  is  evidently  the 
work  of  a  sensible  and  candid  man,  firm  in  his  own  reli- 
gious opinions,  and  tolerant  towards  those  of  others. 

The  book  itself  will  not  add  much  to  the  fame  of  Milton. 
It  is,  like  all  his  Latin  works,  well  written — though  not  ex- 
actly in  the  style  of  the  Prize  Essays  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge. There  is  no  elaborate  imitation  of  classical  antiquity, 
no  scrupulous  purity,  none  of  the  ceremonial  cleanness  which 
characterizes  the  diction  of  our  academical  Pharisees.  He 
does  not  attempt  to  polish  and  brighten  his  composition  into 
the  Ciceronian  gloss  and  brilliancy.  He  does  not,  in  short, 
sacrifice  sense  and  spirit  to  pedantic  refinements.  The  na- 
ture of  his  subject  compelled  him  to  use  many  words 

*'  That  would  liave  made  Quintilian  stare  and  gasp." 

But  he  writes  with  as  much  ease  and  freedom  as  if  Latin 
were  his  mother  tongue;  and  where  he  is  least  happy,  his 
failure  seems  to  arise  from  the  carelessness  of  a  native,  not 
from  the  ignorance  of  a  foreigner.  What  Denham  with 
felicity  says  of  Crowley,  may  be  applied  to  him.  He  wears 
the  garb,  but  not  the  clothes,  of  the  ancients. 

Throughout  the  volume  are  discernible  the  traces  of  a 
powerful  and  independent  mind,  emancipated  from  the  influ- 
ence of  authority,  and  devoted  to  the  search  of  truth.  He 
professes  to  form  his  system  from  the  Bible  alone;  and  his 
digest  of  Scriptural  texts  is  certainly  among  the  best  that 
have  appeared.  But  he  is  not  always  so  happy  in  his  infer- 
ences as  in  his  citations. 

Some  of  the  heterodox  opinions  which  he  avows  seem  to 
have  excited  considerable  amazement :  particularly  his  Ari- 
anism,  and  his  notions  on  the  subject  of  polygamy.  Yet  we 
can  scarcely  conceive  that  any  person  could  have  read  the 


MILTON.  11 

Paradise  Lost  without  suspecting  him  of  the  former;  uor  do 
we  think  that  any  reader,  acquainted  with  the  history  of  his 
life,  ought  to  be  much  startled  at  the  latter.  The  opinions 
which  he  has  expressed  respecting  the  nature  of  the  Deity, 
the  eternity  of  matter,  and  the  observation  of  the  Sabbath, 
might,  we  think,  have  caused  more  just  surprise. 

But  we  will  not  go  into  the  discussion  of  these  points. 
The  book,  were  it  far  more  orthodox,  or  far  more  heretical 
than  it  is,  would  not  much  edify  or  corrupt  the  present 
generation.  The  men  of  our  time  are  not  to  be  converted 
or  perverted  by  quartos.  A  few  more  days,  and  this  Essay 
will  follow  the  Dcfcnsio  Populi  to  the  dust  and  silence  of 
the  upper  shelf.  The  name  of  its  author,  and  the  remarka- 
ble circumstances  attending  its  publication,  will  secure  to  it 
a  certain  degree  of  attention.  For  a  month  or  two,  it  will 
occupy  a  few  minutes  of  chat  in  every  drawing-room,  and 
a  few  columns  in  every  magazine ;  and  it  will  then,  to  bor- 
row the  elegant  language  of  the  play-bills,  be  withdrawn,  to 
make  room  for  the  forthcoming  novelties. 

We  wish,  however,  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  interest,  tran- 
sient as  it  may  be,  which  this  work  has  excited.  The  dex- 
terous Capuchins  never  choose  to  preach  on  the  life  and 
miracles  of  a  saint,  till  they  have  awakened  the  devotional 
feelings  of  their  auditors,  by  exhibiting  some  relic  of  him 
— a  thread  of  his  garment,  a  lock  of  his  hair,  or  a  drop  of 
his  blood.  On  the  same  principle,  we  intend  to  take  advan- 
tage of  the  late  interesting  discovery,  and,  while  this  memorial 
of  a  great  and  good  man  is  still  in  the  hands  of  all,  to  say 
something  of  his  moral  and  intellectual  qualities.  Nor,  we 
are  convinced,  will  the  severest  of  our  readers  blame  us  if, 
on  an  occasion  like  the  present,  we  turn  for  a  short  time 
from  the  topics  of  the  day,  to  commemorate,  in  all  love  and 
reverence,  the  genius  and  virtues  of  John  Milton,  the  poet, 
the  statesman,  the  philosopher,  the  glory  of  English  litera- 
ture, the  champion  and  the  martyr  of  English  liberty. 

It  is  by  his  poetry  that  Milton  is  best  known  ;  and  it  is 
of  his  poetry  that  we  wish  first  to  speak.  By  the  general 
suffrage  of  the  civilized  world,  his  place  has  been  assigned 
among  the  greatest  masters  of  the  art.  His  detractors,  how  - 
ever,  though  out-voted,  have  not  been  silenced.  There  are 
many  critics,  and  some  of  great  name,  who  contrive,  in  the 


12  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

same  breath,  to  extol  the  poems  and  to  decry  the  poet.  The 
works,  they  acknowledge,  considered  in  themselves,  may  be 
classed  among  the  noblest  productions  of  the  human  mind. 
But  they  will  not  allow  the  author  to  rank  with  those  great 
men  who,  born  in  the  infancy  of  civilization,  supplied,  by 
their  own  powers,  the  want  of  instruction,  and,  though  des- 
titute of  models  themselves,  bequeathed  to  posterity  models 
which  defy  imitation.  Milton,  it  is  said,  inherited  what  his 
predecessors  created;  he  lived  in  an  enlightened  age;  he 
received  a  finished  education ;  and  we  must,  therefore,  if  we 
would  form  a  just  estimate  of  his  powers,  make  large  deduc- 
tions for  these  advantages. 

We  venture  to  say,  on  the  contrary,  paradoxical  as  the 
remark  may  appear,  that  no  poet  has  ever  had  to  struggle 
with  more  unfavourable  circumstances  than  Milton.  He 
doubted,  as  he  has  himself  owned,  whether  he  had  not  been 
born  ^^an  age  too  late.^'  For  this  notion  Johnson  has 
thought  fit  to  make  him  the  butt  of  his  clumsy  ridicule. 
The  poet,  we  believe,  understood  the  nature  of  his  art  better 
than  the  critic.  He  knew  that  his  poetical  genius  derived 
no  advantage  from  the  civilization  which  surrounded  him  or 
from  the  learning  which  he  had  acquired :  and  he  looked 
back  with  something  like  regret  to  the  ruder  age  of  simple 
words  and  vivid  impressions. 

We  think  that,  as  civilization  advances,  poetry  almost  ne- 
cessarily declines.  Therefore,  though  we  admire  those  great 
works  of  imagination  which  have  appeared  in  dark  ages,  we 
do  not  admire  them  the  more  because  they  have  appeared 
in  dark  ages.  On  the  contrary,  we  hold  that  the  most  won- 
derful and  splendid  proof  of  genius  is  a  great  poem  pro- 
duced in  a  civilized  age.  We  cannot  understand  why  those 
who  believe  in  that  most  othodox  article  of  literary  faith, 
that  the  earliest  poets  are  generally  the  best,  should  wonder 
at  the  rule,  as  if  it  were  the  exception.  Surely,  the  uni- 
formity of  the  phenomenon  indicates  a  corresponding  uni- 
formity in  the  cause. 

The  fact  is,  that  common  observers  reason  from  the  pro- 
gress of  the  experimental  sciences  to  that  of  the  imitative 
arts.  The  improvement  of  the  former  is  gradual  and  slow. 
Ages  are  spent  in  collecting  materials,  ages  more  in  sepa- 
rating and  combining  them.     Even  when  a  system  has  been 


MILTON.  13 

formed,  there  is  still  something  to  add,  to  alter,  or  to  re- 
ject. Every  generation  enjoys  the  use  of  a  vast  hoard 
bequeathed  to  it  by  antiquity,  and  transmits  it,  augmented 
by  fresh  acquisitions,  to  future  ages.  In  these  pursuits, 
therefore,  the  first  speculators  lie  under  great  disadvan- 
tages, and,  even  when  they  fail,  are  entitled  to  praise. 
Their  pupils,  with  far  inferior  intellectual  powers,  speedily 
surpass  them  in  actual  attainments.  Every  girl  who  has 
read  Mrs.  Marcet's  little  Dialogues  on  Political  Economy, 
could  teach  Montague  or  Walpole  many  lessons  in  finance. 
Any  intelligent  man  may  now,  by  resolutely  applying  him- 
self for  a  few  years  to  mathematics,  learn  more  than  the  j 
great  Newton  knew  after  half  a  century  of  study  and  medi- 
tation. 

But  it  is  not  thus  with  music,  with  painting,  or  with 
sculpture.  Still  less  is  it  thus  with  poetry.  The  progress 
of  refinement  rarely  supplies  these  arts  with  better  objects 
of  imitation.  It  may,  indeed,  improve  the  instruments 
which  are  necessary  to  the  mechanical  operations  of  the 
musician,  the  sculptor,  and  the  painter.  But  language,  the 
machine  of  the  poet,  is  best  fitted  for  his  purpose  in  its  rudest 
state.  Nations,  like  individuals,  first  perceive,  and  then 
abstract.  They  advance  from  particular  images  to  general 
terras.  Hence,  the  vocabulary  of  an  enlightened  society  is  j 
philosophical,  that  of  a  half-civilized  people  is  poetical. 

This  change  in  the  language  of  men  is  partly  the  cause, 
and  partly  the  effect  of  a  corresponding  change  in  the 
nature  of  their  intellectual  operations;  a  change  by  which 
science  gains,  and  poetry  loses.  Generalization  is  neces- 
sary to  the  advancement  of  knowledge,  but  particularly  in 
the  creations  of  the  imagination.  In  proportion  as  men  know 
more,  and  think  more,  they  look  less  at  individuals  and  more 
at  classes.  They  therefore  make  better  theories,  and  worse 
poems.  They  give  us  vague  phrases  instead  of  images, 
and  personified  qualities  instead  of  men.  They  may  be  bet- 
ter able  to  analyze  human  nature  than  their  predecessors. 
But  analysis  is  not  the  business  of  the  poet.  His  office  is  to 
portray,  not  to  dissect.  He  may  believe  in  a  moral  sense, 
like  Shaftesbury.  He  may  refer  all  human  actions  to  self- 
interest,  like  Helvetius,  or  he  may  never  think  about  the 
matter  at  all.     His  creed  on  such  subjects  will  no  more 

Vol.  I.— 2 


14  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

influence  liis  poetry,  properly  so  called,  than  the  notions 
which  a  painter  may  have  conceived  respecting  the  lachry- 
mal glands,  or  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  will  affect  the 
tears  of  his  Niobe,  or  the  blushes  of  his  Aurora.  If  Shak- 
speare  had  written  a  book  on  the  motives  of  human  actions, 
it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  it  would  have  been  a  good 
one.  It  is  extremely  improbable  that  it  would  have  con- 
tained half  so  much  able  reasoning  on  the  subject  as  is  to 
be  found  in  the  ^^  Fable  of  the  Bees.'^  But  could  Man- 
dcvillc  have  created  an  lago  ?  Well  as  he  knew  how  to  re- 
solve characters  into  their  elements,  would  he  have  been 
able  to  combine  those  elements  in  such  a  manner  as  to  make 
up  a  man — a  real,  living,  individual  man  ? 

Perhaps  no  man  can  be  a  poet,  or  can  even  enjoy  poetry, 
without  a  certain  unsouni^ess  of  mind,  if  any  thing  which 
gives  so  much  pleasure  ought  to  be  called  unsoundness. 
By  poetry  we  mean,  not  of  course  all  writing  in  verse,  nor 
even  all  good  writing  in  verse.  Our  definition  excludes 
many  metrical  compositions  which,  on  other  grounds,  deserve 
the  highest  praise.  By  poetry  we  mean,  the  art  of  employ- 
ing words  in  such  a  manner  as  to  produce  an  illusion  on 
the  imagination :  the  art  of  doing  by  means  of  words  what 
the  painter  does  by  means  of  colours.  Thus  the  greatest 
of  poets  has  described  it,  in  lines  universally  admired  for 
the  vigour  and  felicity  of  their  diction,  and  still  more  valu- 
able on  account  of  the  just  notion  which  they  convey  of 
the  art  in  which  he  excelled : 

"As  imagination  bodies  forth 
The  forms  of  things  unknown,  the  poet's  pen 
Turns  them  to  shapes,  and  gives  to  airy  nothing 
A  local  habitation  and  a  name." 

These  are  the  fruits  of  the  ^^fine  frenzy"  which  he  ascribes 
to  the  poet — a  fine  frenzy  doubtless,  but  still  a  frenzy. 
Truth,  indeed,  is  essential  to  poetry ;  but  it  is  the  truth  of 
madness.  The  reasonings  are  just;  but  the  premises  are 
false.  After  the  first  suppositious  have  been  made,  every 
thing  ought  to  be  consistent;  but  those  first  suppositions 
require  a  degree  of  credulity  which  almost  amounts  to  a 
partial  and  temporary  derangement  of  the  intellect.  Hence, 
of  all  people,  children  are  the  most  imaginative.  They 
abandon   themselves    without    reserve   to   every    illusion. 


MILTON.  15 

Every  image  which  is  strongly  presented  to  their  mental 
eye  produces  on  them  the  effect  of  reality.  No  man,  what- 
ever his  sensibility  may  be,  is  ever  affected  by  Hamlet  or 
Lear,  as  a  little  girl  is  affected  by  the  story  of  poor  Red 
Riding-hood.  She  knows  that  it  is  all  false,  that  wolves 
cannot  speak,  that  there  are  no  wolves  in  England.  Yet  in 
spite  of  her  knowledge  she  believes;  she  weeps,  she  trembles ; 
she  dares  not  go  into  a  dark  room  lest  she  should  feel  the 
teeth  of  the  monster  at  her  throat.  Such  is  the  despotism 
of  the  imagination  over  uncultivated  minds. 

In  a  rude  state  of  society,  men  are  children  with  a  greater 
variety  of  ideas.  It  is  therefore  in  such  a  state  of  society 
that  we  may  expect  to  find  the  poetical  temperament  in  its 
highest  perfection.  In  an  enlightened  age,  there  will  be 
much  intelligence,  much  science,  much  philosophy,  abun- 
dance of  just  classification  and  subtle  analj^sis,  abundance 
of  wit  and  eloquence,  abundance  of  verses,  and  even  of  good 
ones — but  little  poetry.  Men  will  judge  and  compare;  but 
they  will  not  create.  They  will  talk  about  the  old  poets, 
and  comment  on  them,  and  to  a  certain  degree  enjoy  them. 
But  they  will  scarcely  be  able  to  conceive  the  effect  which 
poetry  produced  on  their  ruder  ancestors,  the  agony,  the 
ecstasy,  the  plenitude  of  belief.  The  Greek  Rhapsodists, 
according  to  Plato,  could  not  recite  Homer  without  almost 
falling  into  convulsions.'^  The  3Iohawk  hardly  feels  the 
scalping-knife  while  he  shouts  his  death-song.  The  power 
which  the  ancient  bards  of  Wales  and  Germany  exercised 
over  their  auditors  seems  to  modern  readers  almost  miracu- 
lous. Such  feelings  are  very  rare  in  a  civilized  community, 
and  most  rare  among  those  who  participate  most  in  its  im- 
provements.    They  linger  longest  among  the  peasantry. 

Poetry  produces  an  illusion  on  the  eye  of  the  mind,  as  a 
magic  lantern  produces  an  illusion  on  the  eye  of  the  body. 
And,  as  a  magic  lantern  acts  best  in  a  dark  room,  poetry 
efi"ects  its  purpose  most  completely  in  a  dark  age.  As  the 
1:  light  of  knowledge  breaks  in  upon  its  exhibitions,  as  the 
I  ^outlines  of  certainty  become  more  and  more  definite,  and 
the  shades  of  probability  more  and  more  distinct,  the  hues 
and  lineaments  of  the  phantoms  which  it  calls  up  grow 

*  See  the  Dialogue  between  Socrates  and  lo. 


16  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

fainter  and  fainter.  We  cannot  unite  the  incompatible  ad 
vantages  of  reality  and  deception,  the  clear  discernment  of 
truth  and  the  exquisite  enjoyment  of  fiction. 

He  who,  in  an  enlightened  and  literary  society,  aspires  to 
be  a  great  poet,  must  first  become  a  little  child.  He  must 
take  to  pieces  the  whole  web  of  his  mind.  He  must  unlearn 
much  of  that  knowledge  which  has  perhaps  constituted 
hitherto  his  chief  title  of  superiority.  His  very  talents 
will  be  a  hinderance  to  him.  His  difficulties  will  be  pro- 
portioned to  his  proficiency  in  the  pursuits  which  are  fashion- 
able among  his  contemporaries;  and  that  proficiency  will 
in  general  be  proportioned  to  the  vigour  and  activity  of  his 
mind.  And  it  is  well,  if,  after  all  his  sacrifices  and  ex- 
ertions, his  works  do  not  resemble  a  lisping  man,  or  a 
modern  ruin.  We  have  seen,  in  our  own  time,  great  talents, 
intense  labour,  and  long  meditation,  employed  in  this 
struggle  against  the  spirit  of  the  age,  and  employed,  we 
will  not  say,  absolutely  in  vain,  but  with  dubious  success 
and  feeble  applause. 

If  these  reasonings  be  just,  no  poet  has  ever  triumphed 
over  greater  difficulties  than  Milton.  He  received  a  learned 
education.  He  was  a  profound  and  elegant  classical  scholar : 
he  had  studied  all  the  mysteries  of  Rabbinical  literature : 
he  was  intimately  acquainted  with  every  language  of  modern 
Europe,  from  which  either  pleasure  or  information  was 
then  to  be  derived.  He  was  perhaps  the  only  great  poet 
of  later  times  who  has  been  distinguished  by  the  excellence 
of  his  Latin  verse.  The  genius  of  Petrarch  was  scarcely 
of  the  first  order;  and  his  poems  in  the  ancient  language, 
though  much  praised  by  those  who  have  never  read  them, 
are  wretched  compositions.  Cowley,  with  all  his  admirable 
wit  and  ingenuity,  had  little  imagination;  nor  indeed  do 
we  think  his  classical  diction  comparable  to  that  of  Milton. 
The  authority  of  Johnson  is  against  us  on  this  point. 
But  Johnson  had  studied  the  bad  writers  of  the  middle 
ages  till  he  had  become  utterly  insensible  to  the  Augustan 
elegance,  and  was  as  ill  qualified  to  judge  between  two 
Latin  styles  as  an  habitual  drunkard  to  set  up  for  a  wine- 
taster. 

Versification  in  a  dead  language  is  an  exotic,  a  far-fetched, 
costly,  sickly  imitation  of  that  which  elsewhere  may  be 


MILTON.  17 

found  in  healthful  and  spontaneous  perfection.  The  soils 
on  which  this  rarity  flourishes  are  in  general  as  ill  suited 
to  the  production  of  vigorous  native  poetry,  as  the  flower- 
pots of  a  hot-house  to  the  growth  of  oaks.  Thit  the  author 
of  the  Paradise  Lost  should  have  written  the  ^Epistle  to 
Manso,  was  truly  wonderful.  Never  before  were  such 
marked  originality  and  such  exquisite  mimicry  found  to- 
gether. Indeed,  in  all  the  Latin  poems  of  Milton,  the  arti- 
ficial manner  indispensable  to  such  works  is  admirably 
preserved,  while,  at  the  same  time,  the  richness  of  his  fancy 
and  the  elevation  of  his  sentiments  give  to  them  a  peculiar 
charm,  an  air  of  nobleness  and  freedom,  which  distinguishes 
them  from  all  other  writings  of  the  same  class.  They  re- 
mind us  of  the  amusements  of  those  angelic  warriors  who 
composed  the  cohort  of  Grabriel : 

<<  About  him  exercised  heroic  games 
The  unarmed  youth  of  heaven.     But  o'er  their  heads 
Celestial  armory,  shield,  helm,  and  spear, 
Hung  bright,  with  diamond  flaming  and  with  gold." 

"We  cannot  look  upon  the  sportive  exercises  for  which  the 
genius  of  Milton  ungirds  itself,  without  catching  a  glimpse 
of  the  gorgeous  and  terrible  panoply  which  it  is  accustomed 
to  wear.  The  strength  of  his  imagination  triumphed  over 
every  obstacle.  So  intense  and  ardent  was  the  fire  of  his 
mind,  that  it  not  only  was  not  sufi"ocated  beneath  the  weight 
of  its  fuel,  but  penetrated  the  whole  superincumbent  mass 
with  its  own  heat  and  radiance. 

It  is  not  our  intention  to  attempt  any  thing  like  a  com- 
plete examination  of  the  poetry  of  Milton.  The  public  has 
long  been  agreed  as  to  the  merit  of  the  most  remarkable 
passages,  the  incomparable  harmony  of  the  numbers,  and 
the  excellence  of  that  style  which  no  rival  has  been  able 
to  equal,  and  no  parodist  to  degrade,  which  displays  in  their 
highest  perfection  the  idiomatic'  powers  of  the  English 
tongue,  and  to  which  every  ancient  and  every  modern 
language  has  contributed  something  of  grace,  of  energy, 
or  of  music.  In  the  vast  field  of  criticism  in  which  we 
are  entering,  innumerable  reapers  have  already  put  their 
sickles.  Yet  the  harvest  is  so  abundant  that  the  negligent 
search  of  a  straggling  gleaner  may  be  rewarded  with  a  sheaf 

2* 


18  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

The  most  striking  characteristic  of  the  poetry  of  Milton 
is  the  extreme  remoteness  of  the  associations  by  means  of 
which  it  acts  on  the  reader.  Its  effect  is  produced,  not  so 
much  by  what  it  expresses,  as  by  what  it  suggests ;  not  so 
much  by  the  ideas  which  it  directly  conveys,  as  by  other 
ideas  which  are  connected  with  them.  He  electrifies  the 
mind  through  conductors.  The  most  unimaginative  man 
must  understand  the  Iliad.  Homer  gives  him  no  choice, 
and  requires  from  him  no  exertion ;  but  takes  the  whole 
upon  himself,  and  sets  his  images  in  so  clear  a  light  that 
it  is  impossible  to  be  blind  to  them.  The  works  of  Milton 
cannot  be  comprehended  or  enjoyed,  unless  the  mind  of 
the  reader  co-operate  with  that  of  the  writer.  He  does  not 
paint  a  finished  picture,  or  play  for  a  mere  passive  listener. 
He  sketches,  and  leaves  others  to  fill  up  the  outline.  He 
strikes  the  key-note,  and  expects  his  hearer  to  make  out  the 
melody. 

We  often  hear  of  the  magical  influence  of  poetry.  The 
expression  in  general  means  nothing;  but,  applied  to  the 
writings  of  Milton,  it  is  most  appropriate.  His  poetry  acts 
like  an  incantation.  Its  merit  lies  less  in  its  obvious  mean- 
ing than  in  its  occult  power.  There  would  seem,  at  first 
sight,  to  be  no  more  in  his  words  than  in  other  words. 
But  they  are  words  of  enchantment;  no  sooner  are  they 
pronounced  than  the  past  is  present,  and  the  distant  near. 
New  forms  of  beauty  start  at  once  into  existence,  and  all 
the  burial-places  of  the  memory  give  up  their  dead.  Change 
the  structure  of  the  sentence,  substitute  one  synonyme  for 
another,  and  the  whole  effect  is  destroyed.  The  spell  loses 
its  power :  and  he  who  should  then  hope  to  conjure  with 
it,  would  find  himself  as  much  mistaken  as  Cassim,  in  the 
Ai-abian  tale,  when  he  stood  crying,  ^^Open  Wheat,^' 
"Open  Barley,"  to  the  door  which  obeyed  no  sound  but 
"Open  Sesame!"  The  miserable  failure  of  Dryden,  in  his 
attempt  to  rewrite  some  parts  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  is  a  re- 
markable instance  of  this. 

In  support  of  these  observations  we  may  remark,  that 
scarcely  any  passages  in  the  poems  of  Milton  are  more 
generally  known,  or  more  frequently  repeated,  than  those 
which  are  little  more  than  muster-rolls  of  names.  They 
are  not  always  more  appropriate  or  more  melodious  than 
other  names.     But  they  are  charmed  names.     Every  one 


MILTON.  19 

of  them  is  the  first  link  in  a  long  chain  of  associated  ideas. 
Like  the  dwelling-place  of  our  infancy  revisited  in  manhood, 
like  a  song  of  our  country  heard  in  a  strange  land,  they 
produce  upon  us  an  effect  wholly  independent  of  their  in- 
trinsic value.  One  transports  us  back  to  a  remote  period 
of  history.  Another  places  us  among  the  moral  scenery 
and  manners  of  a  distant  country.  A  third  evokes  all  the 
dear  classical  recollections  of  childhood,  the  school-room, 
the  dog-eared  Virgil,  the  holiday,  and  the  prize.  A  fourth 
brings  before  us  the  splendid  phantoms  of  chivalrous  ro- 
mance, the  trophied  lists,  the  embroidered  housings,  the 
quaint  devices,  the  haunted  forests,  the  enchanted  gardens, 
the  achievements  of  enamoured  knights,  and  the  smiles  of 
rescued  princesses. 

In  none  of  the  works  of  Milton  is  his  peculiar  manner 
more  happily  displayed  than  in  the  Allegro  and  the  Pen- 
seroso.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  that  the  mechanism  of 
language  can  be  brought  to  a  more  exquisite  degree  of  per- 
fection. These  poems  differ  from  others  as  ottar  of  roses 
differs  from  ordinary  rose-water,  the  close-packed  essence 
from  the  thin  diluted  mixture.  They  are  indeed  not  so 
much  poems,  as  collections  of  hints,  from  each  of  which  the 
reader  is  to  make  out  a  poem  for  himself.  Every  epithet 
is  a  text  for  a  canto. 

The  Comus  and  the  Samson  Agonistes  are  works  which, 
though  of  very  different  merit,  offer  some  marked  points 
of  resemblance.  They  are  both  lyric  poems  in  the  form 
of  plays.  There  are  perhaps  no  two  kinds  of  composition 
so  essentially  dissimilar  as  the  drama  and  the  ode.  The 
business  of  the  dramatist  is  to  keep  himself  out  of  sight, 
and  to  let  nothing  appear  but  his  characters.  As  soon  as 
he  attracts  notice  to  his  personal  feelings,  the  illusion  is 
broken.  The  effect  is  as  unpleasant  as  that  which  is  pro- 
duced on  the  stage  by  the  voice  of  a  prompter,  or  the  en- 
trance of  a  scene-shifter.  Hence  it  was  that  the  tragedies 
of  Byron  were  his  least  successful  performances.  They 
resemble  those  pasteboard  pictures  invented  by  the  friend 
of  children,  Mr.  Newberry,  in  which  a  single  movable 
head  goes  around  twenty  different  bodies ;  so  that  the  same 
face  looks  out  upon  us  successively,  from  the  uniform  of  a 
hussar,  the  furs  of  a  judge,  and  the  rags  of  a  beggar.     Ic 


20  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

all  the  characters,  patriots  and  tyrants,  haters  and  lovers, 
the  frown  and  sneer  of  Harold  were  discernible  in  an  in- 
stant. But  this  species  of  egotism,  though  fatal  to  the 
drama,  is  the  inspiration  of  the  ode.  It  is  the  part  of  the 
lyric  poet  to  abandon  himself,  without  reserve,  to  his  own 
emotions. 

Between  these  hostile  elements  many  great  men  have 
endeavoured  to  effect  an  amalgamation,  but  never  with 
complete  success.  The  Greek  drama,  on  the  model  of 
which  the  Samson  was  written,  sprung  from  the  ode.  The 
dialogue  was  ingrafted  on  the  chorus,  and  naturally  par- 
took of  its  character.  The  genius  of  the  greatest  of  the 
Athenian  dramatists  co-operated  with  the  circumstances 
under  which  tragedy  made  its  first  appearance,  ^schylus 
was  head  and  heart  a  lyric  poet.  In  his  time,  the  Greeks 
had  far  more  intercourse  with  the  East  than  in  the  days  of 
Homer;  and  they  had  not  yet  acquired  that  immense 
superiority  in  war,  in  science,  and  in  the  arts,  which,  in  the 
following  generation,  led  them  to  treat  the  Asiatics  with 
contempt.  From  the  narrative  of  Herodotus,  it  should 
seem  that  they  still  looked  up,  with  the  veneration  of  dis- 
ciples, to  Egypt  and  Assyria.  At  this  period,  accordingly, 
it  was  natural  that  the  literature  of  Greece  should  be  tinc- 
tured with  the  oriental  style.  And  that  style,  we  think, 
is  clearly  discernible  in  the  works  of  Pindar  and  jS^schylus. 
The  latter  often  reminds  us  of  the  Hebrew  writers.  The 
book  of  Job,  indeed,  in  conduct  and  diction,  bears  a  con- 
siderable resemblance  to  some  of  his  dramas.  Considered 
as  plays,  his  works  are  absurd:  considered  as  choruses, 
they  are  above  all  praise.  If,  for  instance,  we  examine  the 
address  of  Clytemnestra  to  Agamemnon  on  his  return,  or 
the  description  of  the  seven  Argive  chiefs,  by  the  princi- 
ples of  dramatic  writing,  we  shall  instantly  condemn  them 
as  monstrous.  But,  if  we  forget  the  characters,  and  think 
only  of  the  poetry,  we  shall  admit  that  it  has  never  been 
surpassed  in  energy  and  magnificence.  Sophocles  made 
the  Greek  drama  as  dramatic  as  was  consistent  with  its 
original  form.  His  portraits  of  men  have  a  sort  of  simi- 
larity J  but  it  is  the  similarity,  not  of  a  painting,  but  of  a 
bas-relief.  It  suggests  a  resemblance;  but  it  does  not 
produce   an  illusion.      Euripides   attempted  to   carry  the 


MILTON.  21 

reform  further.  But  it  was  a  task  far  beyond  liis  powers, 
perhaps  beyond  any  powers.  Instead  of  correcting  what 
was  bad,  he  destroyed  what  was  excellent.  He  substituted 
crutches  for  stilts,  bad  sermons  for  good  odes. 

Milton,  it  is  well  known,  admired  Euripides  highly ;  much 
more  highly  than,  in  our  opinion,  he  deserved.  Indeed,  the 
caresses,  which  this  partiality  leads  him  to  bestow  on  '^  sad 
Electra's  poet,^^  sometimes  reminds  us  of  the  beautiful  Queen 
of  Fairy-land  kissing  the  long  ears  of  Bottom.  At  all  events, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  veneration  for  the  Athenian, 
whether  just  or  not,  was  injurious  to  the  Samson  Agonistes. 
Had  he  taken  j3Eschylus  for  his  model,  he  would  have  given 
himself  up  to  the  lyric  inspiration,  and  poured  out  profusely 
all  the  treasures  of  his  mind,  without  bestowing  a  thought 
on  those  dramatic  proprieties  which  the  nature  of  the  work 
rendered  it  impossible  to  preserve.  In  the  attempt  to  recon- 
cile things  in  their  own  nature  inconsistent,  he  has  failed,  as 
every  one  must  have  failed.  We  cannot  identify  ourselves 
with  the  characters,  as  in  a  good  play.  We  cannot  identify 
ourselves  with  the  poet,  as  in  a  good  ode.  The  conflicting 
ingredients,  like  an  acid  and  an  alkali  mixed,  neutralize  each 
other.  We  are  by  no  means  insensible  to  the  merits  of 
this  celebrated  piece,  to  the  severe  dignity  of  the  style, 
the  graceful  and  pathetic  solemnity  of  the  opening  speech, 
or  the  wild  and  barbaric  melody  which  gives  so  striking  an 
effect  to  the  choral  passages.  But  we  think  it,  we  confess, 
the  least  successful  effort  of  the  genius  of  Milton. 

The  Comus  is  framed  on  the  model  of  the  Italian  masque, 
as  the  Samson  is  framed  on  the  model  of  the  Greek  tra- 
gedy. It  is,  certainly,  the  noblest  performance  of  the  kind 
which  exists  in  any  language.  It  is  as  far  superior  to  the 
Faithful  Shepherdess,  as  the  Faithful  Shepherdess  is  to 
the  Aminta,  or  the  Aminta  to  the  Pastor  Fido.  It  was  well 
for  Milton  that  he  had  here  no  Euripides  to  mislead  him.  He 
understood  and  loved  the  literature  of  modern  Italy.  But 
he  did  not  feel  for  it  the  same  veneration  which  he  enter- 
tained for  the  remains  of  Athenian  and  Roman  poetry,  con- 
secrated by  so  many  lofty  and  endearing  recollections.  The 
faults,  moreover,  of  his  Italian  predecessors  were  of  a  kind 
to  which  his  mind  had  a  deadly  antipathy.  He  could  stoop 
to  a  plain  style,  sometimes  even  to  a  bald  style;  but  false 


22  maoaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

brilliancy  was  his  utter  aversion.  His  muse  had  no  objec- 
tion to  a  russet  attire;  but  she  turned  with  disgust  from  the 
finery  of  Guarini^  as  tawdry  and  as  paltry  as  the  rags  of  a 
chimney-sweeper  on  May-day.  Whatever  ornaments  she 
wears  are  of  massive  gold,  not  only  dazzling  to  the  sight, 
but  capable  of  standing  the  severest  test  of  the  crucible. 

Milton  attended  in  the  Comus  to  the  distinction  which  he 
neglected  in  the  Samson.  He  made  it  what  it  ought  to  be, 
essentially  lyrical,  and  dramatic  only  in  semblance.  He  has 
not  attempted  a  fruitless  struggle  against  a  defect  inherent 
in  the  nature  of  that  species  of  composition ;  and  he  has, 
therefore,  succeeded,  wherever  success  was  not  impossible. 
The  speeclies  must  be  read  as  majestic  soliloquies;  and  he 
who  so  reads  them  will  be  enraptured  with  their  eloquence, 
their  sublimity,  and  their  music.  The  interruptions  of  the 
dialogue,  however,  impose  a  constraint  upon  the  writer,  and 
break  the  illusion  of  the  reader.  The  finest  passages  are 
those  which  are  lyric  in  form  as  well  as  in  spirit.  ^'  I  should 
much  commend,^'  says  the  excellent  Sir  Henry  AVotton,  in 
a  letter  to  Milton,  "  the  tragical  part,  if  the  lyrical  did  not 
ravish  me  with  a  certain  dorique  delicacy  in  your  songs  and 
odes,  whereunto,  I  most  plainly  confess  to  you,  I  have  seen 
yet  nothing  parallel  in  our  language.^'  The  criticism  was 
just.  It  is  when  Milton  escapes  from  the  shackles  of  the 
dialogue,  when  he  is  discharged  from  the  labour  of  uniting 
two  incongruous  styles,  when  he  is  at  liberty  to  indulge  his 
choral  raptures  without  reserve,  that  he  rises  even  above 
himself.  Then,  like  his  own  Good  Genius,  bursting  from 
the  earthly  form  and  weeds  of  Thyrsis,  he  stands  forth  in 
celestial  freedom  and  beauty;  he  seems  to  cry  exultingly, 


"  Now  my  task  is  smoothly  done, 
I  can  fly  or  I  can  run," 


to  skim  the  earth,  to  soar  above  the  clouds,  to  bathe  in  the 
Elysian  dew  of  the  rainbow,  and  to  inhale  the  balmy  smells 
of  nard  and  cassia,  which  the  musky  winds  of  the  zephyr 
scatter  through  the  cedared  alleys  of  the  Hesperides.* 

*  '<  There  eternal  summer  dwells, 
And  west  winds  with  musky  wing, 
About  the  cedared  alleys  fling 
Nard  and  cassia's  balmy  smells  : 


MILTON.  23 

There  are  several  of  the  minor  poems  of  Milton  on  which 
we  would  willingly  make  a  few  remarks.  Still  more  will- 
ingly would  we  enter  into  a  detailed  examination  of  that 
admirable  poem,  the  Paradise  Eegained,  which,  strangely 
enough,  is  scarcely  ever  mentioned,  except  as  an  instance 
of  the  blindness  of  that  parental  affection  which  men  of 
letters  bear  towards  the  offspring  of  their  intellects.  That 
Milton  was  mistaken  in  preferring  this  work,  excellent  as 
it  is,  to  the  Paradise  Lost,  we  must  readily  admit.  But  we 
are  sure  that  the  superiority  of  the  Paradise  Lost  to  the 
Paradise  Kegained  is  not  more  decided,  than  the  superiority 
of  the  Paradise  Regained  to  every  poem  which  has  since 
made  its  appearance.  But  our  limits  prevent  us  from  dis- 
cussing the  point  at  length.  We  hasten  on  to  that  extra- 
ordinary production,  which  the  general  suffrage  of  critics 
has  placed  in  the  highest  class  of  human  compositions. 

The  only  poem  of  modern  times  which  can  be  compared 
with  the  Paradise  Lost,  is  the  Divine  Comedy.  The  sub- 
ject of  Milton,  in  some  points,  resembled  that  of  Dante; 
but  he  has  treated  it  in  a  widely  different  manner.  We 
cannot,  we  think,  better  illustrate  our  opinion  respecting 
our  own  great  poet,  than  by  contrasting  him  with  the  father 
of  Tuscan  literature. 

The  poetry  of  Milton  differs  from  that  of  Dante,  as  the 
hieroglyphics  of  Egypt  differed  from  the  picture-writing 
of  Mexico.  The  images  which  Dante  employs  speak  for 
themselves : — they  stand  simply  for  what  they  are.  Those 
of  ^Milton  have  a  signification  which  is  often  discernible  only 
to  the  initiated.  Their  value  depends  less  on  what  they 
directly  represent,  than  on  what  they  remotely  suggest. 
However  strange,  however  grotesque  may  be  the  appear- 


Iris  there  with  humid  how 
Waters  the  odorous  banks,  that  blow 
Flowers  of  more  mingled  hue 
Than  her  purfled  scarf  can  show, 
And  drenches  with  Elysian  dew 
(List,  mortals,  if  your  ears  be  true) 
Beds  of  hyacinths  and  roses 
Where  young  Adonis  oft  reposes, 
Wax 'jag  well  of  his  deep  wound." 


24  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS    WRITINGS. 

ance  which  Dante  undertakes  to  describe,  he  never  shrinks 
from  describing  it.  He  gives  us  the  shape,  the  colour,  the 
sound,  the  smell,  the  taste;  he  counts  the  numbers;  he 
measures  the  size.  His  similes  are  the  illustrations  of  a 
traveller.  Unlike  those  of  other  poets,  and  especially  of 
Milton,  they  are  introduced  in  a  plain,  business-like  man- 
ner; not  for  the  sake  of  any  beauty  in  the  objects  from 
which  they  are  drawn,  not  for  the  sake  of  any  ornament 
which  they  may  impart  to  the  poem,  but  simply  in  order  to 
make  the  meaning  of  the  writer  as  clear  to  the  reader  as  it 
is  to  himself  The  ruins  of  the  precipice  which  led  from 
the  sixth  to  the  seventh  circle  of  hell,  were  like  those  of 
the  rock  which  fell  into  the  Adige  on  the  south  of  Trent. 
The  cataract  of  Phlegethon  was  like  that  of  Aqua  Cheta  at 
the  monastery  of  St.  Benedict.  The  place  where  the  here- 
tics were  confined  in  burning  tombs  resembled  the  vast 
cemetery  of  Aries ! 

Now,  let  us  compare  with  the  exact  details  of  Dante  the 
dim  intimations  of  Milton.  "We  will  cite  a  few  examples. 
The  English  poet  has  never  thought  of  taking  the  measure 
of  Satan.  He  gives  us  merely  a  vague  idea  of  vast  bulk. 
In  one  passage  the  fiend  lies  stretched  out,  huge  in  length, 
floating  many  a  rood,  equal  in  size  to  the  earth-born  enemies 
of  Jove,  or  to  the  sea-monster  which  the  mariner  mistakes 
for  an  island.  When  he  addresses  himself  to  battle  against 
the  guardian  angels,  he  stands  like  Teneriflfe  or  Atlas; 
his  stature  reaches  the  sky.  Contrast  with  these  de- 
scriptions the  lines  in  which  Dante  has  described  the 
gigantic  spectre  of  Nimrod.  "His  face  seemed  to  me  as 
long  and  as  broad  as  the  ball  of  St.  Peter^s  at  Rome;  and 
his  other  limbs  were  in  proportion;  so  that  the  bank,  which 
concealed  him  from  the  waist  downwards,  nevertheless 
showed  so  much  of  him,  that  three  tall  Germans  would  in 
vain  have  attempted  to  reach  his  hair."  We  are  sensible 
that  we  do  no  justice  to  the  admirable  style  of  the  Flo- 
rentine poet.  But  Mr.  Gary's  translation  is  not  at  hand, 
and  our  version,  however  rude,  is  sufficient  to  illustrate  our 
meaning. 

Once  more,  compare  the  lazar-house,  in  the  eleventh  book 
of  the  Paradise  Lost,  with  the  last  ward  of  Malebolge  in 
Dante.    Milton  avoids  the  loathsome  details,  and  takes  refuge 


MILTON.  25 

in  indistinct,  but  solemn  and  tremendous  imagery — De- 
spair hurrying  from  couch  to  couch,  to  mock  the  wretches 
with  his  attendance  :  Death  shaking  his  dart  over  them,  but, 
in  spite  of  supplications,  delaying  to  strike.  "What  says 
Dante  ?  ''  There  was  such  a  moan  there  as  there  would  be 
if  all  the  sick,  who,  between  July  and  September,  are  in  the 
hospitals  of  Yaldichiana,  and  of  the  Tuscan  swamps,  and 
of  Sardinia,  were  in  one  pit  together;  and  such  a  stench 
was  issuing  forth  as  is  wont  to  issue  from  decayed  limbs.'' 
We  will  not  take  upon  ourselves  the  invidious  office  of 
settling  precedency  between  two  such  writers.  Each  in 
his  own  department  is  incomparable;  and  each,  we  may  re- 
mark, has,  wisely  or  fortunately,  taken  a  subject  adapted 
to  exhibit  his  peculiar  talent  to  the  greatest  advantage. 
The  Divine  Comedy  is  a  personal  narrative.  Dante  is  the 
eye-witness  and  ear-witness  of  that  which  he  relates.  He  is 
the  very  man  who  has  heard  the  tormented  spirits  crying 
out  for  the  second  death;  who  has  read  the  dusky  charac- 
ters on  the  portal,  within  which  there  is  no  hope;  who 
has  hidden  his  face  from  the  terrors  of  the  Grorgon ;  who  has 
fled  from  the  hooks  and  the  seething  pitch  of  Barbariccia  and 
Diaghignazzo.  His  own  hands  have  grasped  the  shaggy 
sides  of  Lucifer.  His  own  feet  have  climbed'  the  mountain 
of  expiation.  His  own  brow  has  been  marked  by  the 
purifying  angel.  The  reader  would  throw  aside  such  a  tale 
in  incredulous  disgust,  unless  it  were  told  with  the  strongest 
air  of  veracity,  with  a  sobriety  even  in  its  horrors,  with  the 
greatest  precision  and  multiplicity  in  its  details.  The  nar- 
rative of  31ilton  in  this  respect  differs  from  that  of  Dante, 
as  the  adventures  of  Amidas  differ  from  those  of  Gulliver. 
The  author  of  Amidas  would  have  made  his  book  ridicu- 
lous if  he  had  introduced  those  minute  particulars  which 
give  such  a  charm  to  the  work  of  Swift,  the  nautical  ob- 
servations, the  affected  delicacy  about  names,  the  official 
documents  transcribed  at  full  length,  and  all  the  unmeaning 
gossip  and  Bcandal  of  the  court,  springing  out  of  nothing, 
and  tending  to  nothing.  We  are  not  shocked  at  being  told 
that  a  man  who  lived,  nobody  knows  when,  saw  many  very 
strange  sights,  and  we  can  easily  abandon  ourselves  to  the 
illusion  of  the  romance.  But  when  Lemuel  Gulliver,  sur- 
geon, now  actually  resident  at  Rotherhithe,  tells  us  of  pig- 
VoL.  I.— 3 


/ 


26  macaulay's  miscellaneous  "VVEITINGS. 

mies  and  giants,  flying  islands  and  philosopliizing  horseS; 
nothing  but  such  circumstantial  touches  could  produce,  for 
a  single  moment,  a  deception  on  the  imagination. 

Of  all  the  poets  who  have  introduced  into  their  works 
the  agency  of  supernatural  beings,  Milton  has  succeeded 
best.  Here  Dante  decidedly  yields  to  him.  And  as  this 
is  a  point  on  which  many  rash  and  ill-considered  judgments 
have  been  pronounced,  we  feel  inclined  to  dwell  on  it  a 
little  longer.  The  most  fatal  error  which  a  poet  can  pos- 
sibly commit  in  the  management  of  his  machinery,  is  that 
of  attempting  to  philosophize  too  much.  Milton  has  been 
often  censured  for  ascribing  to  spirits  many  functions  of 
which  spirits  must  be  incapable.  But  these  objections, 
though  sanctioned  by  eminent  names,  originate,  we  venture 
to  say,  in  profound  ignorance  of  the  art  of  poetry. 

What  is  spirit?  What  are  our  own  minds,  the  portion 
of  spirit  with  which  we  are  best  acquainted  ?  We  observe 
certain  phenomena.  We  cannot  explain  them  into  material 
causes.  We  therefore  infer  that  there  exists  something 
which  is  not  material.  But  of  this  something  we  have  no 
idea.  We  can  define  it  only  by  negatives.  We  can  reason 
about  it  only  by  symbols.  We  use  the  word,  but  we  have 
no  image  of  the  thing :  and  the  business  of  poetry  is  with 
images,  and  not  with  words.  The  poet  uses  words  indeed; 
but  they  are  merely  the  instruments  of  his  art,  not  its 
objects.  They  are  the  materials  which  he  is  to  dispose  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  present  a  picture  to  the  mental  eye. 
And,  if  they  are  not  so  disposed,  they  are  no  more  entitled 
to  be  called  poetry,  than  a  bale  of  canvass  and  a  box  of 
colours  are  to  be  called  a  painting. 

Logicians  may  reason  about  abstractions ;  but  the  great 
mass  of  mankind  can  never  feel  an  interest  in  them.  They 
must  have  images.  The  strong  tendency  of  the  multitude 
in  all  ages  and  nations  to  idolatry  can  be  explained  on  no 
other  principle.  The  first  inhabitants  of  Greece,  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe,  worshipped  one  invisible  Deity. 
But  the  necessity  of  having  something  more  definite  to 
adore,  produced,  in  a  few  centuries,  the  innumerable  crowd 
of  gods  and  goddesses.  In  like  manner  the  ancient  Per- 
sians thought  it  impious  to  exhibit  the  Creator  under  a 
human  form.     Yet  even  these  transferred  to  the  sun  the 


MILTON.  27 

worship  which,  speculatively,  they  considered  due  only  to 
the  Supreme  mind.  The  history  of  the  Jews  is  the  record 
of  a  continual  struggle  between  pure  Theism,  supported  by 
the  most  terrible  sanctions,  and  the  strangely  fascinating 
desire  of  having  some  visible  and  tangible  object  of  adora- 
tion. Perhaps  none  of  the  secondary  causes  which  Gibbon 
has  assigned  for  the  rapidity  with  which  Christianity  spread 
over  the  world,  while  Judaism  scarcely  ever  acquired  a 
proselyte,  operated  more  powerfully  than  this  feeling.  God, 
the  uncreated,  the  incomprehensible,  the  invisible,  attracted 
few  worshippers.  A  philosopher  might  admire  so  noble  a 
conception;  but  the  crowd  turned  away  in  disgust  from 
words  which  presented  no  image  to  their  minds.  It  was 
before  Deity,  embodied  in  a  human  form,  walking  among 
men,  partaking  of  their  infirmities,  leaning  on  their  bosoms, 
weeping  over  their  graves,  slumbering  in  the  manger,  bleed- 
ing on  the  cross,  that  the  prejudices  of  the  Synagogue,  and 
the  doubts  of  the  Academy,  and  the  pride  of  the  Portico, 
and  the  fasces  of  the  lictor,  and  the  swords  of  thirty  Legions, 
were  humbled  in  the  dust !  Soon  after  Christianity  had 
achieved  its  triumph,  the  principle  which  had  assisted  it 
began  to  corrupt.  It  became  a  new  paganism.  Patron 
saints  assumed  the  offices  of  household  gods.  St.  George 
took  the  place  of  Mars.  St.  Elmo  consoled  the  mariner  for 
the  loss  of  Castor  and  Pollux.  The  Virgin  Mother  and 
Cecilia  succeeded  to  Venus  and  the  Muses.  The  fascination 
of  sex  and  loveliness  was  again  joined  to  that  of  celestial 
dignity;  and  the  homage  of  chivalry  was  blended  with  that 
of  religion.  Reformers  have  often  made  a  stand  against 
these  feelings;  but  never  with  more  than  apparent  and  par- 
tial success.  The  men  who  demolished  the  images  in  ca- 
thedrals, have  not  always  been  able  to  demolish  those  which 
were  enshrined  in  their  minds.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to 
show,  that  in  politics  the  same  rule  holds  good.  Doctrines, 
we  are  afraid,  must  generally  be  embodied  before  they  can 
excite  strong  public  feeling.  The  multitude  is  more  easily 
interested  for  the  most  unmeaning  badge,  or  the  most  in- 
significant name,  than  for  the  most  important  principle. 

From  these  considerations  we  infer,  that  no  poet  who 
should  affect  that  metaphysical  accuracy  for  the  want  of 
which  Milton  has  been  blamed,  would  escape  a  disgraceful 


28  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

failure.  Still,  however,  there  was  another  extreme,  which, 
though  fiir  less  dangerous,  was  also  to  be  avoided.  The 
imaginations  of  men  are  in  a  great  measure  under  the  con- 
trol of  their  opinions.  The  most  exquisite  art  of  a  poetical 
colouring  can  produce  no  illusion  when  it  is  employed  to 
represent  that  which  is  at  once  perceived  to  be  incongruous 
and  absurd.  Milton  wrote  in  an  age  of  philosophers  and 
theologians.  It  was  necessary  therefore  for  him  to  abstain 
from  giving  such  a  shock  to  their  understanding,  as  might 
break  the  charm  which  it  was  his  object  to  throw  over 
their  imaginations.  This  is  the  real  explanation  of  the  in- 
distinctness and  inconsistency  with  which  he  has  often 
been  reproached.  Dr.  Johnson  acknowledges,  that  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  for  him  to  clothe  his  spirits  with  ma- 
terial forms.  ^^But,^^  says  he,  '^he  should  have  secured 
the  consistency  of  his  system,  by  keeping  immateriality  out 
of  sight,  and  seducing  the  reader  to  drop  it  from  his  thoughts." 
This  is  easily  said;  but  what  if  he  could  not  seduce  the 
reader  to  drop  it  from  his  thoughts  ?  What  if  the  contrary 
opinion  had  taken  so  full  a  possession  of  the  minds  of  men, 
as  to  leave  no  room  even  for  the  quasi-helief  which  poetry 
requires  ?  Such  we  suspect  to  have  been  the  case.  It  was 
impossible  for  the  poet  to  adopt  altogether  the  material  or 
the  immaterial  system.  He  therefore  took  his  stand  on  the 
debatable  ground.  He  left  the  whole  in  ambiguity.  He 
has  doubtless  by  so  doing  laid  himself  open  to  the  charge 
of  inconsistency.  But,  though  philosophically  in  the  wrong, 
we  cannot  but  believe  that  he  was  poetically  in  the  right. 
This  t^isk,  which  almost  any  other  writer  would  have  found 
impracticable,  was  easy  to  him.  The  peculiar  art  which 
he  possessed  of  communicating  his  meaning  circuitously, 
through  a  long  succession  of  associated  ideas,  and  of  in- 
timating more  than  he  expressed,  enabled  him  to  disguise 
those  incongruities  wliich  he  could  not  avoid. 

Poetry,  which  relates  to  the  beings  of  another  world, 
ought  to  be  at  once  mysterious  and  picturesque.  That  of 
Milton  is  so.  That  of  Dante  is  picturesque,  indeed,  beyond 
any  that  was  ever  wntten.  Its  eFect  approaches  to  that  pro- 
duced by  the  pencil  or  the  chisel.  But  it  is  picturesque  to  the 
exclusion  of  all  mystery.  This  is  a  fa-ult  indeed  on  tb-^  right 
side,  a  fault  inseparable  from  the  plan  of  his  p^i*\^  viiich, 


MILTON.  29 

as  we  have  already  observed,  rendered  the  ut  jaost  accuracy 
of  description  necessary.  Still  it  is  a  fault.  His  super- 
natural agents  excite  an  interest;  but  it  is  not  the  interest 
which  is  proper  to  supernatural  agents.  We  feel  that  we 
could  talk  with  his  ghosts  and  demons,  without  any  emo- 
tions of  unearthly  awe.  We  could,  like  Don  Juan,  ask 
them  to  supper,  and  eat  heartily  in  their  company.  His 
angels  are  good  men  with  wings.  His  devils  are  spiteful, 
ugly  executioners.  His  dead  men  are  merely  living  men 
in  strange  situations.  The  scene  which  passes  between  the 
poet  and  Facinata  is  justly  celebrated.  Still,  Facinata  in 
the  burning  tomb  is  exactly  what  Facinata  would  have  been 
at  an  auto  da  fe.  Nothing  can  be  more  touching  than  the 
first  interview  of  Dante  and  Beatrice.  Yet  what  is  it,  but 
a  lovely  woman  chiding,  with  sweet  austere  composure,  the 
lover  for  whose  affections  she  is  grateful,  but  whose  vices 
she  reprobates?  The  feelings  which  give  the  passage  its 
charm  would  suit  the  streets  of  Florence  as  well  as  the 
summit  of  the  Mount  of  Purgatory. 

The  Spirits  of  Milton  are  unlike  those  of  almost  all  other 
writers.  His  fiends  in  particular  are  wonderful  creations. 
They  are  not  metaphysical  abstractions.  They  are  not 
wicked  men.  They  are  not  ugly  beasts.  They  have  no 
horns,  no  tails,  none  of  the  fee-faw-fum  of  Tasso  and  Klop- 
stock.  They  have  just  enough  in  common  with  human 
nature  to  be  intelligible  to  human  beings.  Their  charac- 
ters are,  like  their  forms,  marked  by  a  certain  dim  re- 
semblance to  those  of  men,  but  exaggerated  to  gigantic 
dimensions  and  veiled  in  mysterious  gloom. 

Perhaps  the  gods  and  demons  of  ^schylus  may  best 
bear  a  comparison  with  the  angels  and  devils  of  Milton. 
The  style  of  the  Athenian  had,  as  we  have  remarked,  some- 
thing of  the  vagueness  and  tenor  of  the  oriental  character; 
and  the  same  peculiarity  may  be  traced  in  his  mythology. 
It  has  nothing  of  the  amenity  and  elegance  which  we  gene- 
rally find  in  the  superstitions  of  Greece.  All  is  rugged, 
barbaric,  and  colossal.  His  legends  seem  to  harmonize 
less  with  the  fragrant  groves  and  graceful  porticos,  in 
which  his  countrymen  paid  their  vows  to  the  God  of  Light 
and  Goddess  of  Desire,  than  with  those  huge  and  grotesque 
labyrinths  of  eternal  granite,  in  which  Egypt  enshrined 

3* 


30  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

her  mystic  Osiris,  or  in  which  Hindostan  still  bows  dowi? 
to  her  seven-headed  idols.  His  favourite  gods  are  those  of 
the  elder  generations — the  sons  of  heaven  and  earth,  com- 
pared with  whom  Jupiter  himself  was  a  stripling  and  an 
upstart — the  gigantic  Titans  and  the  inexorable  Furies. 
Foremost  among  his  creations  of  this  class  stands  Prome- 
theus, half  fiend,  half  redeemer,  the  friend  of  man,  the 
sullen  and  implacable  enemy  of  heaven.  He  bears  un- 
doubte.diy  a  considerable  resemblance  to  the  Satan  of  Milton. 
In  both  we  find  the  same  impatience  of  control,  the  same 
ferocity,  the  same  unconquerable  pride.  In  both  characters 
also  are  mingled,  though  in  very  diff'erent  proportions,  some 
kind  and  generous  feelings.  Prometheus,  however,  is 
hardly  superhuman  enough.  He  talks  too  much  of  his 
chains  and  his  uneasy  posture.  He  is  rather  too  much  de- 
pressed and  agitated.  His  resolution  seems  to  depend  on 
the  knowledge  which  he  possesses,  that  he  holds  the  fate 
of  his  torturer  in  his  hands,  and  that  the  hour  of  his  release 
will  surely  come.  But  Satan  is  a  creature  of  another  sphere. 
The  might  of  his  intellectual  nature  is  victorious  over  the 
extremity  of  pain.  Amidst  agonies  which  cannot  be  con- 
ceived without  horror,  he  deliberates,  resolves,  and  even 
exults.  Against  the  sword  of  Michael,  against  the  thunder 
of  Jehovah,  against  the  flaming  lake  and  the  marl  burning 
with  solid  fire,  against  the  prospect  of  an  eternity  of  un- 
intermittent  misery,  his  spirit  bears  up  unbroken,  resting 
on  its  own  innate  energies,  requiring  no  support  from  any 
thing  external,  nor  even  from  hope  itself ! 

To  return  for  a  moment  to  the  parallel  which  we  have 
been  attempting  to  draw  between  Milton  and  Dante,  we 
would  add  that  the  poetry  of  these  great  men  has  in  a  con- 
siderable degree  taken  its  character  from  their  moral 
qualities.  They  are  not  egotists.  They  rarely  obtrude 
their  idiosyncracies  on  their  readers.  They  have  nothing 
in  common  with  those  modern  beggars  for  fame,  who  extort 
a  pittance  from  the  compassion  of  the  inexperienced,  by 
exposing  the  nakedness  and  sores  of  their  minds.  Yet  it- 
would  be  difficult  to  name  two  writers  whose  works  have 
been  more  complete^,  though  undesignedly,  coloured  by 
their  personal  feelings. 

The  character  of  Milton  was  peculiarly  distinguished  by 


MILTON.  31 

loftiness  of  thought;  that  of  Dante  by  intensity  of  feeling. 
In  ever}  line  of  the  Divine  Comedy  "we  discern  the  asperity 
which  is  produced  by  pride  struggling  with  misery.  There 
is  perhaps  no  work  in  the  world  so  deeply  and  uniformly 
sorrowful.  The  melancholy  of  Dante  was  no  fantastic 
caprice.  It  was  not,  as  far  as  at  this  distance  of  time  can 
be  judged,  the  effect  of  external  circumstances.  It  was 
from  within.  Neither  love  nor  glory,  neither  the  conflicts 
of  the  earth  nor  the  hope  of  heaven  could  dispel  it.  It 
twined  every  consolation  and  every  pleasure  into  its  own 
nature.  It  resembled  that  noxious  Sardinian  soil  of  which 
the  intense  bitterness  is  said  to  have  been  perceptible  even 
in  its  honey.  His  mind  was,  in  the  noble  language  of  the 
Hebrew  poet,  ^'a  land  of  darkness,  as  darkness  itself,  and 
where  the  light  was  as  darkness !''  The  gloom  of  his 
character  discolours  all  the  passions  of  men  and  all  the  face 
of  nature,  and  tinges  with  its  own  livid  hue  the  flowers  of 
Paradise  and  the  glories  of  the  Eternal  Throne !  All  the 
portraits  of  him  are  singularly  characteristic.  No  person 
can  look  on  the  features,  noble  even  to  ruggedness,  the 
dark  furrows  of  the  cheek,  the  haggard  and  woful  stare  of 
the  eye,  the  sullen  and  contemptuous  curve  of  the  lip,  and 
doubt  that  they  belonged  to  a  man  too  proud  and  too  sensi- 
tive to  be  happy. 

Milton  was,  like  Dante,  a  statesman  and  a  lover;  and, 
like  Dante,  he  had  been  unfortunate  in  ambition  and  in  love. 
He  had  survived  his  health  and  his  sight,  the  comforts  of 
his  home  and  the  prosperity  of  his  party.  Of  the  great 
men  by  whom  he  had  been  distinguished  at  his  entrance 
into  life,  some  had  been  taken  away  from  the  evil  to  come ; 
some  had  carried  into  foreign  climates  their  unconquerable 
hatred  of  oppression ;  some  were  pining  in  dungeons;  and 
some  had  poured  forth  their  blood  on  scaffolds.  That 
hateful  proscription,  facetiously  termed  the  Act  of  Indem- 
nity and  Oblivion,  had  set  a  mark  on  the  poor,  blind,  de- 
serted poet,  and  held  him  up  by  name  to  the  hatred  of  a 
profligate  court  and  an  inconstant  people!  Yenal  and 
licentious  scribblers,  with  just  sufficient  talent  to  clothe 
the  thoughts  of  a  pander  in  the  style  of  a  bellman,  were 
now  the  favourite  writers  of  the  sovereign  and  the  public. 
It  was  a  loathesome  herd — which  could  be  compared  to 


32  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

nothing  so  fitly  as  to  the  rabble  of  Comus,  grotesque  mon 
sters,  half  bestial,  half  human,  dropping  with  wine^  bloated 
with  gluttony,  and  reeling  in  obscene  dances.  Amidst 
these  his  muse  was  placed,  like  the  chaste  lady  of  the 
Masque,  lofty,  spotless,  and  serene — to  be  chatted  at,  and 
pointed  at,  and  grinned  at,  by  the  whole  rabble  of  Satyrs 
and  Goblins.  If  ever  despondency  and  asperity  could  be 
excused  in  any  man,  it  might  have  been  excused  in  Milton. 
But  the  strength  of  his  mind  overcame  every  calamity. 
Neither  blindness,  nor  gout,  nor  age,  nor  penury,  nor  do- 
mestic afflictions,  nor  political  disapi^ointments,  nor  abuse, 
nor  proscription,  nor  neglect,  had  power  to  disturb  his 
sedate  and  majestic  patience.  His  spirits  do  not  seem  to 
have  been  high,  but  they  were  singularly  equable.  His 
temper  was  serious,  perhaps  stern;  but  it  was  a  temper 
which  no  sufferings  could  render  sullen  or  fretful.  Such 
as  it  was,  when,  on  the  eve  of  great  events,  he  returned  from 
his  travels,  in  the  prime  of  health  and  manly  beauty,  loaded 
with  literary  distinctions  and  glowing  with  patriotic  hopes, 
such  it  continued  to  be — when,  after  having  experienced 
every  calamity  which  is  incident  to  our  nature,  old,  poor, 
sightless,  and  disgraced,  he  retired  to  his  hovel  to  die ! 

Hence  it  was,  that  though  he  wrote  the  Paradise  Lost 
at  a  time  of  life  when  images  of  beauty  and  tenderness  are 
in  general  beginning  to  fade,  even  from  those  minds  in 
which  they  have  not  been  efiaced  by  anxiety  and  disappoint- 
ment, he  adorned  it  with  all  that  is  most  lovely  and  de- 
lightful in  the  physical  and  in  the  moral  world.  Neither 
Theocritus  nor  Ariosto  had  a  finer  or  a  more  healthful 
sense  of  the  pleasantness  of  external  objects,  or  loved  better 
to  luxuriate  amidst  sunbeams  and  flowers,  the  songs  of 
nightingales,  the  juice  of  summer  fruits,  and  the  coolness 
of  shady  fountains.  His  conception  of  love  unites  all  the 
voluptuousness  of  the  oriental  harem,  and  all  the  gallantry 
of  the  chivalric  tournament,  with  all  the  pure  and  quiet 
affection  of  an  English  fireside.  His  poetry  reminds  us  of 
the  miracles  of  Alpine  scenery.  Nooks  and  dells,  beautiful 
as  fairy-land,  are  embosomed  in  its  most  rugged  and  gigan- 
tic elevations.  The  roses  and  myrtles  bloom  unchilled  on 
the  verge  of  the  avalanche. 

Traces,  indeed,  of  the  peculiar  character  of  Milton  may 


MILTON.  33 

be  found  in  all  his  works;  but  it  is  most  strongly  displayed 
in  the  Sonnets.  Those  remarkable  poems  have  been  un- 
dervalued by  critics,  who  have  not  understood  their  nature. 
They  have  no  epigrammatic  point.  There  is  none  of  the 
ingenuity  of  Filicaji  in  the  thought,  none  of  the  hard  and 
brilliant  enamel  of  Petrarch  in  the  style.  They  are  simple 
but  majestic  records  of  the  feelings  of  the  poet;  as  little 
tricked  out  for  the  public  eye  as  his  diary  would  have  been. 
A  victory,  an  expected  attack  upon  the  city,  a  momentary 
fit  of  depression  or  exultation,  a  jest  thrown  out  against  one 
of  his  books,  a  dream,  which  for  a  short  time  restored  to 
him  that  beautiful  face  over  which  the  grave  had  closed  for 
ever,  led  him  to  musings  which,  without  effort,  shaped 
themselves  into  verse.  The  unity  of  sentiment  and  severity 
of  style,  which  characterize  these  little  pieces,  remind  us 
of  the  Greek  Anthology ;  or  perhaps  still  more  of  the  Col- 
lects of  the  English  Liturgy — the  noble  poem  on  the  mas- 
sacres of  Piedmont  is  strictly  a  collect  in  verse. 

The  Sonnets  are  more  or  less  striking,  according  as  the 
occasions  which  gave  birth  to  them  are  more  or  less  in- 
teresting. But  they  are,  almost  without  exception,  dignified 
by  a  sobriety  and  greatness  of  mind  to  which  we  know  not 
where  to  look  for  a  parallel.  It  would  indeed  be  scarcely 
safe  to  draw  any  decided  inferences  as  to  the  character  of 
a  writer,  from  passages  directly  egotistical.  But  the  quali- 
ties which  we  have  ascribed  to  Milton,  though  perhaps 
most  strongly  marked  in  those  parts  of  his  works  which 
treat  of  his  personal  feelings,  are  distinguishable  in  every 
page,  and  impart  to  all  his  writings,  prose  and  poetry^ 
English,  Latin,  and  Italian,  a  strong  family  likeness. 

His  public  conduct  was  such  as  was  to  be  expected  from 
a  man  of  a  spirit  so  high,  and  an  intellect  so  powerful.  He 
lived  at  one  of  the  most  memorable  eras  in  the  history  of 
mankind;  at  the  very  crisis  of  the  great  conflict  between 
Oromasdes  and  Arimanes — liberty  and  despotism,  reason 
and  prejudice.  That  great  battle  was  fought  for  no  single 
generation,  for  no  single  land.  The  destinies  of  the  human 
race  were  staked  on  the  same  cast  with  the  freedom  of  the 
English  people.  Then  were  first  proclaimed  those  mighty 
principles,  which  have  since  worked  their  way  into 
the  depths  of  the  American  forests,  which  have  roused 


84  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Greece  from  the  slavery  and  degradation  of  two  thousand 
years,  and  which,  from  one  end  of  Europe  to  the  other, 
have  kindled  an  unquenchable  fire  in  the  hearts  of  the  op- 
pressed, and  loosed  the  knees  of  the  oppressors  with  a 
strange  and  unwonted  fear ! 

Of  those  principles,  then  struggling  for  their  infant  ex- 
istence, Milton  was  the  most  devoted  and  eloquent  literary 
champion.  We  need  not  say  how  much  we  admire  his 
public  conduct.  But  we  cannot  disguise  from  ourselves, 
that  a  large  portion  of  his  countrymen  still  think  it  un- 
justifiable. The  civil  war,  indeed,  has  been  more  discussed, 
and  is  less  understood,  than  any  event  in  English  history. 
The  Roundheads  laboured  under  the  disadvantage  of  which 
the  lion  in  the  fable  complained  so  bitterly.  Though  they 
were  the  conquerors,  their  enemies  were  the  painters.  As 
a  body,  they  had  done  their  utmost  to  decry  and  ruin  litera- 
ture; and  literature  was  even  with  them,  as,  in  the  long  run, 
it  always  is  with  its  enemies.  The  best  book,  on  their  side 
of  the  question,  is  the  charming  memoir  of  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson. May's  History  of  the  Parliament  is  good;  but  it 
breaks  off  at  the  most  interesting  crisis  of  the  struggle. 
The  performance  of  Ludlow  is  very  foolish  and  violent; 
and  most  of  the  later  writers  who  have  espoused  the  same 
cause,  Oldmixon,  for  instance,  and  Catherine  Macaulay, 
have,  to  say  the  least,  been  more  distinguished  by  zeal  than 
either  by  candour  or  by  skill.  On  the  other  side  are  the 
most  authoritative  and  the  most  popular  historical  works  in 
our  language,  that  of  Clarendon,  and  that  of  Hume.  The 
former  is  not  only  ably  written  and  full  of  valuable  in- 
formation, but  has  also  an  air  of  dignity  and  sincerity  which 
makes  even  the  prejudices  and  errors  with  which  it  abounds 
respectable.  Hame,  from  whose  fascinating  narrative  the 
great  mass  of  the  reading  public  are  still  contented  to  take 
their  opinions,  hated  religion  so  much,  that  he  hated  liberty 
for  having  been  allied  with  religion — and  has  pleaded  the 
cause  of  tyranny  with  the  dexterity  of  an  advocate,  while 
afiecting  the  impartiality  of  a  judge. 

The  public  conduct  of  Milton  must  be  approved  or  con- 
demned, according  as  the  resistance  of  the  people  to  Charles 
I.  shall  appear  to  be  justifiable  or  criminal.  We  shall  there- 
fore make  no  apology  for  dedicating  a  few  pages  to  the  dis- 


MILTON.  35 

cussioii  of  tlat  interesting  and  most  important  question. 
We  shall  not  argue  it  on  general  grounds,  we  shall  not 
recur  to  those  primary  principles  from  which  the  claim  of 
any  government  to  the  obedience  of  its  subjects  is  to  be  de- 
duced; it  is  a  vantage-ground  to  which  we  are  entitled; 
but  we  will  relinquish  it.  We  are,  on  this  point,  so  con- 
fident of  superiority,  that  we  have  no  objection  to  imitate  the 
ostentatious  generosity  of  those  ancient  knights,  who  vowed 
to  joust  without  helmet  or  shield  against  all  enemies,  and 
to  give  their  antagonist  the  advantage  of  sun  and  wind. 
We  will  -take  the  naked,  constitutional  question.  We  con- 
fidently affirm,  that  every  reason,  which  can  be  urged  in 
favour  of  the  Revolution  of  1688,  may  be  urged  with  at  least 
equal  force  in  favour  of  what  is  called  the  Great  Rebellion. 
In  one  respect  only,  we  think,  can  the  w'armest  admirers 
of  Charles  venture  to  say  that  he  was  a  -better  sovereign 
than  his  son.  He  was  not,  in  name  and  profession,  a  papist; 
we  say  in  name  and  profession,  because  both  Charles  him- 
self and  his  miserable  creature.  Laud,  while  they  abjured 
the  innocent  badges  of  popery,  retained  all  its  worst  vices, 
a  complete  subjection  of  reason  to  authority,  a  weak  prefer- 
ence of  form  to  substance,  a  childish  passion  for  mummeries, 
an  idolatrous  veneration  for  the  priestly  character,  and, 
above  all,  a  stupid  and  ferocious  intolerance.  This,  how- 
ever, we  waive.  We  will  concede  that  Charles  was  a  good 
protestant;  but  we  say  that  his  protestantism  does  not  make 
the  slightest  distinction  between  his  case  and  that  of  James. 
The  principles  of  the  Revolution  have  often  been  grossly 
misrepresented,  and  never  more  than  in  the  course  of  the 
present  year.  There  is  a  certain  class  of  men,  who,  while 
they  profess  to  hold  in  reverence  the  great  names  and  great 
actions  of  former  times,  never  look  at  them  for  any  other 
purpose  than  in  order  to  find  in  them  some  excuse  for  ex- 
isting abuses.  In  every  venerable  precedent,  they  pass  by 
what  is  essential,  and  take  only  what  is  accidental:  they 
keep  out  of  sight  what  is  beneficial,  and  hold  up  to  public 
imitation  all  that  is  defective.  If,  in  any  part  of  any  great 
example,  there  be  any  thing  unsound,  these  flesh-flies  de- 
tect it  with  an  unerring  instinct,  and  dart  upon  it  with  a 
ravenous  delight.  They  cannot  always  prevent  the  advo- 
cates of  a  good  measure  from  compassing  their  end;  \)ui 
they  feel,  with  their  prototype,  that 


36  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

"Their  labours  must  be  to  pervert  that  end, 
And  out  of  good  still  to  find  means  of  evil." 

To  the  blessings  which  England  has  derived  from  the 
Revolution  these  people  are  utterly  insensible.  The  ex- 
pulsion of  a  tyrant,  the  solemn  recognition  of  pop  alar  rights,' 
liberty,  security,  toleration,  all  go  for  nothing  with  them. 
One  sect  there  was,  which,  from  unfortunate  temporary 
causes,  it  was  thought  necessary  to-  keep  under  close  re- 
straint. One  part  of  the  empire  there  was  so  unhappily 
circumstanced,  that  at  that  time  its  misery  was  necessary  to 
our  happiness,  and  its  slavery  to  our  freedom !  These  are 
the  parts  of  the  Revolution  which  the  politicians  of  whom 
we  speak  love  to  contemplate,  and  which  seem  to  them,  not 
indeed  to  vindicate,  but  in  some  degree  to  palliate  the  good 
which  it  has  produced.  Talk  to  them  of  Naples,  of  Spain, 
or  of  South  America,  They  stand  forth,  zealots  for  the 
doctrine  of  Divine  Right,  which  has  now  come  back  to  us, 
like  a  thief  from  transportation,  under  the  alias  of  Legiti- 
macy. But  mention  the  miseries  of  Ireland  !  Then  Wil- 
liam is  a  hero.  Then  Somers  and  Shrewsbury  are  great 
men.  Then  the  Revolution  is  a  glorious  era !  The  very 
same  persons,  who,  in  this  country,  never  omit  an  oppor- 
tunity of  reviving  every  wretched  Jacobite  slander  respect- 
ing the  whigs  of  that  period,  have  no  sooner  crossed  St. 
Greorge's  channel,  than  they  begin  to  fill  their  bumpers  ta 
the  glorious  and  immortal  memory.  They  may  truly  boast 
that  they  look  not  at  men,  but  measures.  So  that  evil  be 
done,  they  care  not  who  does  it — the  arbitrary  Charles  or 
the  liberal  "William,  Ferdinand  the  catholic  or  Frederick 
the  protestant!  On  such  occasions  their  deadliest  oppo- 
nents may  reckon  upon  their  candid  construction.  The 
bold  assertions  of  these  people  have  of  late  impressed  a 
large  portion  of  the  public  with  an  opinion  that  James  II. 
was  expelled  simply  because  he  was  a  catholic,  and  that  the 
Revolution  was  essentially  a  protestant  revolution. 

But  this  certainly  was  not  the  case.  Nor  can  any  person, 
who  has  acquired  more  knowledge  of  the  history  of  those 
times  than  is  to  be  found  in  Goldsmith's  Abridgment,  be- 
lieve that,  if  James  had  held  his  own  religious  opinions 
without  wishing  to  make  proselytes;  or  if,  wishing  even  to 


MILTO.V.  37 

make  proselytes,  he  had  contented  himself  with  exerting 
only  his  constitutional  influence  for  that  purpose,  the  Prince 
of  Orange  would  ever  have  been  invited  over.  Our  an- 
cestors, we  suppose,  knew  their  own  meaning.  And,  if  we 
may  believe  them,  their  hostility  was  primarily  not  to 
popery,  but  to  tyranny.  They  did  not  drive  out  a  tyrant 
because  he  was  a  catholic ;  but  they  excluded  catholics  from 
the  crown,  because  they  thought  them  likely  to  be  tyrants. 
The  ground  on  which  they,  in  their  famous  resolution, 
declared  the  throne  vacant,  was  this,  ''  that  James^  had 
broken  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  kingdom.''  Every 
man,  therefore,  who  approves  of  the  Revolution  of  1668, 
must  hold  that  the  breach  of  fundamental  laws  on  the  part 
of  the  sovereign  justifies  resistance.  The  question  then  is 
this:  Had  Charles  I.  broken  the  fundamental  laws  of 
England  ? 

No  person  can  answer  in  the  negative,  unless  he  refuses 
credit,  not  merely  to  all  the  accusations  brought  against 
Charles  by  his  opponents,  but  to  the  narratives  of  the  warm- 
est royalists,  and  to  the  confessions  of  the  king  himself. 
If  there  be  any  historian  of  any  party  who  has  related  the 
erents  of  that  reign,  the  conduct  of  Charles,  from  his  ac- 
cession to  the  meeting  of  the  Long  Parliament,  had  been  a 
continued  course  of  oppression  and  treachery.  Let  those 
who  applaud  the  Revolution  and  condemn  the  rebellion, 
mention  one  act  of  James  IT.  to  which  a  parallel  is  not  to 
be  found  in  the  history  of  his  father.  Let  them  lay  then- 
fingers  on  a  single  article  in  the  Declaration  of  Right,  pre- 
sented by  the  two  Houses  to  William  and  Mary,  which 
Charles  is  not  acknowledged  to  have  violated.  He  had, 
according  to  the  testimony  of  his  own  friends,  usurped  the 
functions  of  the  legislature,  raised  taxes  without  the  consen* 
of  parliament,  and  quartered  troops  on  the  people  in  the 
most  illegal  and  vexatious  manner.  Not  a  single  session 
of  parliament  had  passed  without  some  unconstitutional 
attack  on  the  freedom  of  debate.  The  right  of  petition 
was  grossly  violated.  Arbitrary  judgments,  _  exorbitant 
fines,  and  unwarranted  imprisonments,  were  grievances  of 
daily  and  hourly  occurrence.  If  these  things  do  not  justify 
resistance,  the  Revolution  was  treason;  if  they  do,  the  G-reat 
Rebellion  was  laudable. 
Vol.  I.— 4 


38  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

But,  it  is  said,  why  not  adopt  milder  measures  ?  Why, 
after  the  king  had  consented  to  so  many  reforms,  and  re- 
nounced so  many  oppressive  prerogatives,  did  the  parlia- 
ment continue  to  rise  in  their  demands,  at  the  risk  of  pro- 
voking a  civil  war?  The  ship-money  had  been  given  up. 
The  star-chamber  had  been  abolished.  Provision  had  been 
made  for  the  frequent  convocation  and  secure  deliberation 
of  parliaments.  Why  not  pursue  an  end  confessedly  good, 
by  peaceable  and  regular  means?  We  recur  again  to  the 
analogy  of  the  Revolution.  Why  was  James  driven  from 
the  throne?  Why  was  he  not  retained  upon  conditions? 
He  too  had  offered  to  call  a  free  parliament,  and  to  submit 
to  its  decision  all  the  matters  in  dispute.  Yet  we  praise 
our  forefathers,  who  preferred  a  revolution,  a  disputed  suc- 
cession, a  dynasty  of  strangers,  twenty  years  of  foreign  and 
intestine  war,  a  standing  army,  and  a  national  debt,  to  the 
rule,  however  restricted,  of  a  tried  and  proved  tyrant. 
The  Long  Parliament  acted  on  the  same  principle,  and  is 
entitled  to  the  same  praise.  They  could  not  trust  the 
king.  He  had  no  doubt  passed  salutary  laws.  But  what 
assurance  had  they  that  he  would  not  break  them  ?  He 
had  renounced  oppressive  prerogatives.  But  where  was  the 
security  that  he  would  not  resume  them  ?  They  had  to  deal 
with  a  man  whom  no  tie  could  bind,  a  man  who  made  and 
broke  promises  with  equal  facility,  a  man  whose  honour 
had  been  a  hundred  times  pawned — and  never  redeemed. 

Here,  indeed,  the  Long  Parliament  stands  on  still  stronger 
ground  than  the  Convention  of  1688.  No  action  of  James 
can  be  compared  for  wickedness  and  impudence  to  the  con- 
duct of  Charles  with  respect  to  the  Petition  of  Bight.  The 
lords  and  commons  present  him  with  a  bill  in  which  the 
constitutional  limits  of  his  power  are  marked  out.  He 
hesitates;  he  evades;  at  last  he  bargains  to  give  his  assent, 
for  five  subsidies.  The  bill  receives  his  solemn  assent. 
The  subsidies  are  voted.  But  no  sooner  is  the  tyrant  re- 
lieved, than  he  returns  at  once  to  all  the  arbitrary  measures 
which  he  had  bound  himself  to  abandon,  and  violates  all 
the  clauses  of  the  very  act  which  he  had  been  paid  to  pass. 

For  more  than  ten  years,  the  people  had  seen  the  rights, 
which  were  theirs  by  a  double  claim,  by  immemorial  in- 
heritance and  by  recent  purchase,  infringed  by  the  perfidious 


MILTON.  39 

king  who  had  recognised  them.  At  length  circumstances 
compelled  Charles  to  summon  another  parliament;  another 
chance  was  given  them  for  liberty.  Were  they  to  throw  it 
away,  as  they  had  thrown  away  the  former?  Were  they 
again  to  be  cozened  by  le  Roi  le  veut  ?  Were  they  again 
to  advance  their  money  on  pledges,  which  had  been  for- 
feited over  and  over  again  i  Were  they  to  lay  a  second 
Petition  of  Right  at  the  foot  of  the  throne,  to  grant  another 
lavish  aid  in  exchange  for  another  unmeaning  ceremony, 
and  then  take  their  departure,  till,  after  ten  years  more  of 
fraud  and  oppression,  their  prince  should  again  require  a 
supply,  and  again  repay  it  with  a  perjury?  They  were 
compelled  to  choose  whether  they  would  tru%t  a  tyrant  or 
conquer  him.     We  think  that  they  chose  wisely  and  nobly. 

The  advocates  of  Charles,  like  the  advocates  of  other 
malefactors  against  whom  overwhelming  evidence  is  pro- 
duced, generally  decline  all  controversy  about  the  facts, 
and  content  themselves  with  calling  testimony  to  character. 
He  had  so  many  private  virtues !  And  had  James  II.  no 
private  virtues?  Was  even  Oliver  Cromwell,  his  bitterest 
enemies  themselves  being  judges,  destitute  of  private  virtues? 
And  what,  after  all,  are  the  virtues  ascribed  to  Charles? 
A  religious  zeal,  not  more  sincere  than  that  of  his  son,  and 
fully  as  weak  and  narrow-minded,  and  a  few  of  the  ordinary 
household  decencies,  which  half  the  tombstones  in  Eng- 
land claim  for  those  who  lie  beneath  them.  A  good  father ! 
A  good  husband  !  Ample  apologies,  indeed,  for  fifteen  years 
of  persecution,  tyranny,  and  falsehood ! 

We  charge  him  with  having  broken  his  coronation-oath — 
and  we  are  told  that  he  kept  his  marriage-vow !  We  ac- 
cuse him  of  having  given  up  his  people  to  the  merciless 
inflictions  of  the  most  hot-headed  and  hard-hearted  of  pre- 
lates— and  the  defence  is,  that  he  took  his  little  son  on  his 
knee  and  kissed  him !  We  censure  him  for  having  violated 
the  articles  of  the  Petition  of  Right,  after  having,  for  good 
and  valuable  consideration,  promised  to  observe  them — and 
we  are  informed  that  he  was  accustomed  to  hear  prayers 
at  six  o'clock  in  the  morning !  It  is  to  such  considerations 
as  these,  together  with  his  Vandyke  dress,  his  handsome 
face,  and  his  peaked  beard,  that  he  owes,  we  verily  be- 
lieve; most  of  his  popularity  with  the  present  generation. 


40  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

For  ourselves,  we  own  that  we  do  not  understand  the 
common  phrase — a  good  man,  but  a  bad  king.  We  can 
as  easily  conceive  a  good  man  and  an  unnatural  father,  or 
a  good  man  and  a  treacherous  friend.  We  cannot,  in 
estimating  the  character  of  an  individual,  leave  out  of  our 
consideration  his  conduct  in  the  most  important  of  all  hu- 
man relations.  And  if  in  that  relation  we  find  him  to 
have  J^een  selfish,  cruel,  and  deceitful,  we  shall  take  the 
liberty  to  call  him  a  bad  man,  in  spite  of  all  his  temperance 
at  table,  and  all  his  regularity  at  chapel. 

We  cannot  refrain  from  adding  a  few  words  respecting 
a  topic  on  which  the  defenders  of  Charles  are  fond  of  dwell- 
ing. If,  they  say,  he  governed  his  people  ill,  he  at  least 
governed  them  after  the  example  of  his  predecessors.  If 
he  violated  their  privileges,  it  was  because  those  privileges 
had  not  been  accurately  defined.  No  act  of  oppression  has 
ever  been  imputed  to  him  which  has  not  a  parallel  in  the 
annals  of  the  Tudors.  This  point  Hume  has  laboured,  with 
an  art  which  is  as  discreditable  in  an  historical  work  as  it 
would  be  admirable  in  a  forensic  address.  The  answer  is 
short,  clear,  and  decisive.  Charles  had  assented  to  the 
Petition  of  Eight.  He  had  renounced  the  oppressive  pow- 
ers said  to  have  been  exercised  by  his  predecessors;  and  he 
had  renounced  them  for  money.  He  was  not  entitled  to 
set  up  his  antiquated  claims  against  his  own  recent  release. 

These  arguments  are  so  obvious  that  it  may  seem  super- 
fluous to  dwell  upon  them.  But  those  who  have  observed 
how  much  the  events  of  that  time  are  misrepresented  and 
misunderstood,  Avill  not  blame  us  for  stating  the  case  simply. 
It  is  a  case  of  which  the  simplest  statement  is  the  strongest. 

The  enemies  of  the  parliament,  indeed,  rarely  choose  to 
take  issue  on  the  great  points  of  the  question.  They  con- 
tent themselves  with  exposing  some  of  the  crimes  and  follies 
to  which  public  commotions  necessarily  give  birth.  They 
bewail  the  unmerited  fate  of  Strafford.  They  execrate  the 
lawless  violence  of  the  army.  They  laugh  at  the  scriptural 
names  of  the  preachers.  Major-generals  fleecing  their  dis- 
tricts; soldiers  revelling  on  the  spoils  of  a  ruined  peasantry; 
upstarts,  enriched  by  the  public  plunder,  taking  possession 
of  the  hospitable  firesides  and  hereditary  trees  of  the  old 
gentry;  boys  smashing  the  beautiful  windows  of  cathedrals; 


MILTON.  41 

Quakers  riding  naked  through  the  market-place;  Fifth- 
monarchy-men  shouting  for  King  Jesus ;  agitators  lecturing 
from  the  top  of  tubs,  on  the  fate  of  Agag; — all  these,  they 
tell  us,  were  the  ofispring  of  tlie  Great  Ptebellion. 

Be  it  so.  "We  are  not  careful  to  answer  in  this  matter. 
These  charges,  were  tliey  infinitely  more  important,  would 
not  alter  our  opinion  of  an  event,  which  alone  has  made  us 
to  differ  from  the  slaves  who  crouch  beneath  the  sceptres  of 
Brandenburg  and  Braganza.  Many  evils,  no  doubt,  loere 
produced  by  the  civil  war.  They  were  the  price  of  our 
liberty.  Has  the  acquisition  been  worth  the  sacrifice?  It 
is  the  nature  of  the  devil  of  tyranny  to  tear  and  rend  the 
body  which  he  leaves.  Are  the  miseries  of  continued  pos- 
session less  horrible  than  the  struggles  of  the  tremendous 
exorcism  ? 

If  it  were  j)ossible  that  a  people,  brought  up  under  an 
intolerant  and  arbitrary  system,  could  subvert  that  system 
without  acts  of  cruelty  and  folly,  half  the  objections  to 
despotic  power  would  be  removed.  We  should,  in  that 
case,  be  compelled  to  acknowledge  that  it  at  least  produces 
no  pernicious  effects  on  the  intellectual  and  moral  character 
of  a  people.  We  deplore  the  outrages  which  accompany 
revolutions.  But  the  more  violent  the  outrages,  the  more 
assured  we  feel  that  a  revolution  was  necessary.  The 
violence  of  those  outrages  will  always  be  proportioned  to 
the  ferocity  and  ignorance  of  the  people :  and  the  ferocity 
and  ignorance  of  the  people  will  be  proportioned  to  the  op- 
pression and  degradation  under  which  they  have  been  ac- 
customed to  live.  Thus  it  was  in  our  civil  war.  The  rulers 
in  the  church  and  state  reaped  only  that  which  they  had 
sown.  They  had  prohibited  free  discussion — they  had  done 
their  best  to  keep  the  people  unacquainted  with  their  duties 
and  their  rights.  The  retribution  was  just  and  natural. 
If  they  suffered  from  popular  ignorance,  it  was  because  they 
had  themselves  taken  away  the  key  of  knowledge.  If  they 
were  assailed  with  blind  fury,  it  was  because  they  had  ex- 
acted an  equally  blind  submission. 

It  is  the  character  of  such  revolutions  that  we  always  see 
the  worst  of  them  at  first.  Till  men  have  been  for  some 
time  free,  they  know  not  how  to  use  their  freedom.  The 
natives  of  wine-countries  are  always  sober.     In  climates 


«fc2  3VIACAU lay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

where  wine  is  a  rarity,  intemperance  abounds.  A  newly- 
liberated  people  may  be  compared  to  a  northern  army  en- 
camped on  the  Rhine  or  the  Xeres.  It  is  said  that,  when 
soldiers  in  such  a  situation  first  find  themselves  able  to  in- 
dulge without  restraint  in  such  a  rare  and  expensive  luxury, 
nothing  is  to  be  seen  but  intoxication.  Soon,  however, 
plenty  teaches  discretion;  and  after  wine  has  been  for  a 
few  months  their  daily  fare,  they  become  more  temperate 
than  they  had  ever  been  in  their  own  country.  In  the  same 
manner,  the  final  and  permanent  fruits  of  liberty  are  wisdom, 
moderation,  and  mercy.  Its  immediate  effects  are  often 
atrocious  crimes,  conflicting  errors,  skepticism  on  points  the 
most  clear,  dogmatism  on  points  the  most  mysterious.  It 
is  just  at  this  crisis  that  its  enemies  love  to  exhibit  it.  They 
pull  down  the  scaflfolding  from  the  half-finished  edifice; 
they  point  to  the  flying  dust,  the  falling  bricks,  the  comfortless 
rooms,  the  frightful  irregularity  of  the  whole  appearance; 
and  then  ask  in  scorn  where  the  promised  splendour  and 
comfort  are  to  be  found  ?  If  such  miserable  sophisms  were 
to  prevail,  there  would  never  be  a  good  house  or  a  good 
government  in  the  world. 

Ariosto  tells  a  pretty  story  of  a  fairy,  who,  by  some  mys- 
terious law  of  her  nature,  was  condemned  to  appear  at 
certain  seasons  in  the  form  of  a  foul  and  poisonous  snake. 
Those  who  injured  her  during  the  period  of  her  disguise, 
were  forever  excluded  from  participation  in  the  blessings 
which  she  bestowed.  But  to  those  who,  in  spite  of  her  loath- 
some aspect,  pitied  and  protected  her,  she  afterwards  re- 
vealed herself  in  the  beautiful  and  celestial  form  which  was 
natural  to  her,  accompanied  their  steps,  granted  all  their 
wishes,  filled  their  houses  with  wealth,  made  them  happy 
in  love,  and  victorious  in  war."*"  Such  a  spirit  is  Liberty. 
At  times  she  takes  the  form  of  a  hateful  reptile.  She 
grovels,  she  hisses,  she  stings.  Eut  wo  to  those  who  in 
disgust  shall  venture  to  crush  her !  And  happy  are  those 
who,  having  dared  to  receive  her  in  her  degraded  and 
frightful  shape,  shall  at  length  be  rewarded  by  her  in  the 
time  of  her  beauty  and  her  glory. 

There  is  only  one  cure  for  the  evils  which  newly  acquired 


*  Orlando  Furioso,  canto  43. 


MILTON.  43 

freedom  produces — and  that  cure  is  freedom!  When  a 
prisoner  leaves  his  cell,  he  cannot  bear  the  light  of  day — 
he  is  unable  to  discriminate  colours  or  recognise  faces. 
But  the  remedy  is  not  to  remand  him  into  his  dungeon,  but 
to  accustom  him  to  the  rays  of  the  sun.  The  blaze  of  truth 
and  liberty  may  at  first  dazzle  and  bewilder  nations  which 
have  become  half-blind  in  the  house  of  bondage.  But  let 
them  gaze  on,  and  they  will  soon  be  able  to  bear  it.  In  a 
few  years  men  learn  to  reason.  The  extreme  violence  of 
opinion  subsides.  Hostile  theories  correct  each  other. 
The  scattered  elements  of  truth  cease  to  conflict,  and  begin 
to  coalesce.  And  at  length  a  system  of  justice  and  order 
is  educed  out  of  the  chaos. 

Many  politicians  of  our  time  are  in  the  habit  of  laying  it 
down  as  a  self-evident  proposition,  that  no  people  ought  to 
be  free  till  they  are  fit  to  use  their  freedom.  The  maxim  is 
worthy  of  the  fool  in  the  old  story,  who  resolved  not  to  go 
into  the  water  till  he  had  learnt  to  swim  ?  If  men  are  to 
wait  for  liberty  till  they  become  wise  and  good  in  slavery, 
they  may  indeed  wait  forever. 

Therefore  it  is  that  we  decidedly  approve  of  the  conduct 
of  Milton  and  the  other  wise  and  good  men  who,  in  spite 
of  much  that  was  ridiculous  and  hateful  in  the  conduct  of 
their  associates,  stood  firmly  by  the  cause  of  public  liberty. 
We  are  not  aware  that  the  poet  has  been  charged  with 
personal  participation  in  any  of  the  blamable  excesses  of 
that  time.  The  favourite  topic  of  his  enemies  is  the  line 
of  conduct  which  he  pursued  with  regard  to  the  execution 
of  the  king.  Of  that  celebrated  proceeding  we  by  no 
means  approve.  Still  we  must  say,  in  justice  to  the  many 
eminent  persons  who  concurred  in  it,  and  in  justice  more 
particularly  to  the  eminent  person  who  defended  it,  that 
nothing  can  be  more  absurd  than  the  imputations  which, 
for  the  last  hundred  and  sixty  years,  it  has  been  the  fashion 
to  cast  upon  the  regicides.  We  have  throughout  abstained 
from  appealing  to  first  principles — we  will  not  appeal  to 
them  now.  We  recur  again  to  the  parallel  case  of  the 
Revolution.  What  essential  distinction  can  be  drawn  be- 
tween the  execution  of  the  father  and  the  deposition  of  the 
son  ?  What  constitutional  nuixim  is  there,  which  applies 
to  the  former  and  not  to  th  \  latter  ?     The  king  can  do  no 


44  macaulay's  miscellaneous  avritings. 

wrong.  If  so,  James  was  as  innocent  as  Charles  could  have 
been.  The  minister  only  ought  to  be  responsible  for  the 
acts  of  the  sovereign.  If  so,  -vvhy  not  impeach  Jeffries,  and 
retain  James?  The  person  of  a  king  is  sacred.  Was  the 
person  of  James  considered  sacred  at  the  Bojne?  To  dis- 
charge cannon  against  an  army  in  which  a  king  is  known 
to  be  posted,  is  to  approach  pretty  near  to  regicide.  Charles, 
too,  it  should  always  be  remembered,  was  put  to  death  by 
men  who  had  been  exasperated  by  the  hostilities  of  several 
years,  and  wlio  had  never  been  bound  to  him  by  any  other 
tie  than  that  which  was  common  to  them  with  all  their  fel- 
low-citizens. Those  who  drove  James  from  his  throne, 
who  seduced  his  army,  who  alienated  his  friends,  who  first 
imprisoned  him  in  his  palace,  and  then  turned  him  out  of 
it,  who  broke  in  upon  his  very  slumbers  by  imperious  mes- 
sages, who  pursued  him  with  fire  and  sword  from  one  part 
of  the  empire  to  another,  who  hanged,  drew,  and  quartered 
his  adherents,  and  attainted  his  innocent  heir,  were  his 
nephew  and  his  two  daughters!  When  we  reflect  on  all 
these  things,  we  are  are  at  a  loss  to  conceive  how  the  same 
persons  who,  on  the  fifth  of  November,  thank  God  for 
wonderfully  conducting  his  servant  King  William,  and  for 
making  all  opposition  fall  before  him  until  he  became  our 
king  and  governor,  can,  on  the  thirtieth  of  January,  con- 
trive to  be  afraid  that  the  blood  of  the  royal  martyr  may 
be  visited  on  themselves  and  their  children. 

We  do  not,  we  rej)eat,  approve  of  the  execution  of 
Charles;  not  because  the  constitution  exempts  the  king 
from  responsibility,  for  we  know  that  all  such  maxims,  how- 
ever excellent,  have  their  exceptions;  nor  because  we  feel 
any  peculiar  interest  in  his  character,  for  we  think  that  his 
sentence  describes  him  with  perfect  justice  as  a  '' tyrant,  a 
traitor,  a  murderer,  and  a  public  enemy  ;^^  but  because  we 
are  convinced  that  the  measure  was  most  injurious  to  the 
cause  of  freedom.  He  whom  it  removed  was  a  captive  and 
a  hostage.  His  heir,  to  whom  the  allegiance  of  every  royalist 
was  instantly  transferred,  was  at  large.  The  Presbyterians 
could  never  have  been  perfectly  reconciled  to  the  father 
They  had  no  such  rooted  enmity  to  the  son.  The  great 
body  of  the  people,  also,  contemplated  that  proceeding  with 
feelings  which,  however  unreasonable,  no  government  could 
safely  venture  to  outrage. 


MILTON.  45 

But,  thougli  we  think  the  conduct  of  the  regicides  blama- 
ble,  that  of  Milton  appears  to  us  in  a  very  different  light. 
The  deed  was  done.  It  could  not  be  undone.  The  evil 
was  incurred ;  and  the  object  was  to  render  it  as  small  as 
possible.  We  censure  the  chiefs  of  the  army  for  not  yield- 
ing to  the  popular  opinion :  but  we  cannot  censure  Milton 
for  wishing  to  change  that  opinion.  The  very  feeling,  which 
would  have  restrained  us  from  committing  the  act,  would 
nave  led  us,  after  it  had  been  committed,  to  defend  it  against 
the  ravings  of  servility  and  superstition.  For  the  sake  of 
public  liberty,  we  wish  that  the  thing  had  not  been  done 
while  the  people  disapproved  of  it.  But,  for  the  sake  of 
public  liberty,  we  should  also  have  wished  the  people  to 
approve  of  it  when  it  was  done.  If  any  thing  more  were 
wanting  to  the  justification  of  Milton,  the  book  of  Salmasius 
would  furnish  it.  That  miserable  performance  is  now  with 
justice  considered  only  as  a  beacon  to  word-catchers  who  wish 
to  become  statesmen.  The  celebrity  of  the  man  who  refuted 
it,  the  "  ^ne£e  magni  dextra,'^  gives  it  all  its  fame  with  the 
present  generation.  In  that  age  the  state  of  things  was 
different.  It  was  not  then  fully  understood  how  vast  an 
interval  separates  the  mere  classical  scholar  from  the  political 
philosopher.  Nor  can  it  be  doubted,  that  a  treatise  which, 
bearing  the  name  of  so  eminent  a  critic,  attacked  the  funda- 
mental principles  of  all  free  governments,  must,  if  suffered 
to  remain  unanswered,  have  produced  a  most  pernicious 
effect  on  the  public  mind. 

We  wish  to  add  a  few  words  relative  to  another  subject 
on  which  the  enemies  of  Milton  delight  to  dwell — his  con- 
duct during  the  administration  of  the  Protector.  That  an 
enthusiastic  votary  of  liberty  should  accept  office  under  a 
military  usurper,  seems,  no  doubt,  at  first  sight,  extraordi- 
nary. But  all  the  circumstances  in  which  the  country  was 
then  placed  were  extraordinary.  The  ambition  of  Oliver 
was  of  no  vulgar  kind.  He  never  seems  to  have  coveted 
despotic  power.  He  at  first  fought  sincerely  and  manfully 
for  the  parliament,  and  never  deserted  it,  till  it  had  deserted 
its  duty.  If  he  dissolved  it  by  force,  it  was  not  till  he  found 
that  the  few  members,  who  remained  after  so  many  deaths, 
secessions,  and  expulsions,  were  desirous  to  appropriate  to 
themselves  a  po  vier,  which  they  held  only  in  trust,  and  to 


46  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

inflict  upon  England  the  curse  of  a  Venetian  oligarchy.  But 
even  when  thus  placed  by  violence  at  the  head  of  affairs,  he 
did  not  assume  unlimited  power.  He  gave  the  country  a 
constitution  far  more  perfect  than  any  which  had  at  that 
time  been  known  in  the  world.  He  reformed  the  repre- 
sentative system  in  a  manner  which  has  extorted  praise  even 
from  Lord  Clarendon.  For  himself,  he  demanded  indeed 
the  first  place  in  the  commonwealth;  but  with  powers 
t^carcely  so  great  as  those  of  a  Dutch  stadtholder,  or  an 
American  president.  He  gave  the  parliament  a  voice  in  the 
appointment  of  ministers,  and  left  to  it  the  whole  legislative 
authority — not  even  reserving  to  himself  a  veto  on  its  enact- 
ments. And  he  did  not  require  that  the  chief-magistracy 
should  be  hereditary  in  his  family.  Thus  far,  we  think,  if 
the  circumstances  of  the  time,  and  the  opportunities  which 
he  had  of  aggrandizing  himself,  be  fairly  considered,  he  will 
not  lose  by  comparison  with  Washington  or  Bolivar.  Had 
his  moderation  been  met  by  corresponding  moderation,  there 
is  no  reason  to  think  that  he  would  have  overstepped  the 
line  which  he  had  traced  for  himself.  But  when  he  found 
that  his  parliaments  questioned  the  authority  under  which 
they  met,  and  that  he  was  in  danger  of  being  deprived  of 
the  restricted  power  which  was  absolutely  necessary  to  his 
personal  safety,  then,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  he  adopted 
a  more  arbitrary  policy. 

Yet,  though  we  believe  that  the  intentions  of  Cromwell 
were  at  first  honest,  though  we  believe  that  he  was  driven 
from  the  noble  course  which  he  had  marked  out  for  him- 
self by  the  almost  irresistible  force  of  circumstances,  though 
we  admire,  in  common  with  all  men  of  all  parties,  the 
ability  and  energy  of  his  splendid  administration,  we  are 
not  pleading  for  arbitrary  and  lawless  power,  even  in  his 
hands.  We  know  that  a  good  constitution  is  infinitely 
better  than  the  best  despot.  But  we  suspect,  that,  at  the 
time  of  which  we  speak,  the  violence  of  religious  and  po- 
litical enmities  rendered  a  stable  and  happy  settlement  next 
to  impossible.  The  choice  lay,  not  between  Cromwell  and 
liberty,  but  between  Cromwell  and  the  Stuarts.  That  Mil- 
ton chose  well,  no  man  can  doubt,  who  fairly  compares  the 
events  of  the  protectorate  with  those  of  the  thirty  years 
which  succeeded  it — the  darkest  and  most  disgraceful  in 


MILTON.  47 

the  English  annals.  Cromwell  was  evidently  laying,  though 
in  an  irregular  manner,  the  foundations  of  an  admirable 
system.  Never  before  had  religious  liberty  and  the  freedom 
of  discussion  been  enjoyed  in  a  greater  degree.  Never  had 
the  national  honour  been  better  upheld  abroad,  or  the  seat 
of  justice  better  filled  at  home.  And  it  was  rarely  that  any 
opposition,  which  stopped  short  of  open  rebellion,  provoked 
the  resentment  of  the  liberal  and  magnanimous  usurper. 
The  institutions  which  he  had  established,  as  set  down  in 
the  Instrument  of  Government,  and  the  Humble  Petition 
and  Advice,  were  excellent.  His  practice,  it  is  true,  too 
often  departed  from  the  theory  of  these  institutions.  But, 
had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer,  it  is  probable  that  his  in- 
stitutions would  have  survived  him,  and  that  his  arbitrary 
practice  would  have  died  with  him.  His  power  had  not 
been  consecrated  by  any  ancient  prejudices.  It  was  upheld 
only  by  his  great  personal  qualities.  Little,  therefore,  was 
to  be  dreaded  from  a  second  Protector,  unless  he  were  also 
a  second  Oliver  Cromwell.  The  events  which  followed  his 
decease  are  the  most  complete  vindication  of  those  who  ex- 
erted themselves  to  uphold  his  authority.  For  his  death 
dissolved  the  whole  frame  of  society.  The  army  rose  against 
the  parliament,  the  different  corps  of  the  army  against  each 
other.  Sect  raved  against  sect.  Party  plotted  against 
party.  The  Presbyterians,  in  their  eagerness  to  be  revenged 
on  the  Independents,  sacrificed  their  own  liberty,  and  de- 
serted all  their  old  principles.  Without  casting  one  glance 
on  the  past,  or  requiring  one  stipulation  for  the  future,  they 
threw  down  their  freedom  at  the  feet  of  the  most  trivo- 
lous  and  heartless  of  tyrants. 

Then  came  those  days  never  to  be  recalled  without  a 
blush — the  days  of  servitude  without  loyalty,  and  sensuality 
without  love,  of  dwarfish  talents  and  gigantic  vices,  the 
paradise  of  cold  hearts  and  narrow  minds,  the  golden  age 
of  the  coward,  the  bigot,  and  the  slave.  The  king  cringed 
to  his  rival  that  he  might  trample  on  his  people,  sunk  into 
a  viceroy  of  France,  and  pocketed,  with  complacent  infamy, 
her  degrading  insults  and  her  more  degrading  gold.  The 
caresses  of  harlots  and  the  jests  of  buffoons  regulated  the 
measures  of  a  government,  which  had  just  ability  enough 
to  deceive,  and  just  religion  enough  to  persecute.     The 


48  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

principles  of  liberty  were  the  scoff  of  every  grinning 
courtier,  and  the  anathema  niaranatha  of  every  fawning 
dean.  In  every  high  place,  worship  was  paid  "to  Charles 
and  James — Belial  and  Moloch;  and  England  propitiated 
those  obscene  and  cruel  idols  with  the  blood  of  her  best 
and  bravest  children.  Crime  succeeded  to  crime,  and  dis- 
grace to  disgrace,  till  the  race,  accursed  of  God  and  man, 
was  a  second  tim(3  driven  forth,  to  wander  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  and  to  be  a  by-word  and  a  shaking  of  the  head  to  the 
nations. 

Most  of  the  remarks  which  we  have  hitherto  made  on  the 
public  character  of  Milton,  apply  to  him  only  as  one  of  a 
large  body.  We  shall  proceed  to  notice  some  of  the  pecu- 
liarities which  distinguished  him  from  his  contemporaries. 
And,  for  that  purpose,  it  is  necessary  to  take  a  short  survey 
of  the  parties  into  which  the  political  world  was  at  that  time 
divided.  "We  must  premise,  that  our  observations  are  in- 
tended to  apply  only  to  those  who  adhered,  from  a  sincere 
preference,  to  one  or  to  the  other  side.  At  a  period  of  pub- 
lic commotion,  every  faction,  like  an  Oriental  army,  is  at- 
tended by  a  crowd  of  camp  followers,  a  useless  and  heart- 
less rabble,  who  prowl  round  its  line  of  march  in  the  hope 
of  picking  up  something  under  its  protection,  but  desert  it 
in  the  day  of  battle,  and  often  join  to  exterminate  it  after  a 
defeat.  England,  at  the  time  of  which  we  are  treating, 
abounded  with  such  fickle  and  selfish  politicians,  who  trans- 
ferred their  support  to  every  government  as  it  rose, — who 
kissed  the  hand  of  the  king  in  1G40,  and  spit  in  his  face  in 
1649, — who  shouted  with  equal  glee  when  Cromwell  was 
inaugurated  in  Westminster  Hall,  and  when  he  was  dug  up 
to  be  hanged  at  Tyburn, — who  dined  on  calves'  heads  or  on 
broiled  rumps,  and  cut  down  oak-branches  or  stuck  them 
up  as  circumstances  altered,  without  the  slighest  shame  or 
repugnance.  These  we  leave  out  of  the  account.  We  take 
our  estimaie  of  parties  from  those  who  really  deserved  to  be 
called  partisans. 

We  would  speak  first  of  the  Puritans,  the  most  remarka- 
ble body  of  men,  perhaps,  which  the  world  has  ever  pro- 
duced. The  odious  and  ridiculous  parts  of  their  character 
lie  on  the  surface.  He  that  runs  may  read  them ;  nor  have 
there  been  wanti'ng  attentive  and  malicious  observers  to  point 


MILTON.  49 

them  out.  For  many  years  after  the  Restoratiou,  they  were 
the  theme  of  unmeasured  invective  and  derision.  They 
were  exposed  to  the  utmost  licentiousness  of  the  press  and 
of  the  stage,  at  the  time  when  the  press  and  the  stage  were 
most  licentious.  They  were  not  men  of  letters :  they  were, 
as  a  body,  unpopular;  they  could  not  defend  themselves; 
and  the  public  would  not  take  them  under  its  protection. 
They  were  therefore  abandoned,  without  reserve,  to  the 
tender  mercies  of  the  satirists  and  dramatists.  The  osten- 
tatious simplicity  of  their  dress,  their  sour  aspect,  their 
nasal  twang,  their  stiff  posture,  their  long  graces,  their  He- 
brew names,  the  Scriptural  phrases  which  they  introduced 
on  every  occasion,  their  contempt  of  human  learning,  their 
detestation  of  polite  amusements,  were  indeed  fair  game  for 
the  laughers.  But  it  is  not  from  the  laughers  alone  that 
the  philosophy  of  history  is  to  be  learnt.  And  he  who  ap- 
proaches this  subject  should  carefully  guard  against  the  in- 
fluence of  that  potent  ridicule,  which  has  already  misled  so 
many  excellent  writers. 

<<Ecco  il  fonte  del  riso,  ed  ecco  il  rio 
Che  mortali  perigli  in  se  contieue : 
Hor  qui  tener  a  fren  nostro  a  desio, 
Ed  esser  cauti  molto  a  noi  couviene."* 

Those  who  roused  the  people  to  resistance — who  directed 
their  measures  through  a  long  series  of  eventful  years — 
who  formed,  out  of  the  most  unpromising  materials,  the 
finest  army  that  Europe  had  ever  seen — who  trampled  down 
king,  church,  and  aristocracy — who,  in  the  short  inter- 
vals of  domestic  sedition  and  rebellion,  made  the  name 
of  England  terrible  to  every  nation  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  were  no  vulgar  fanatics.  Most  of  their  absurdities 
were  mere  external  badges,  like  the  signs  of  freemasonry 
or  the  dresses  of  friars.  We  regret  that  these  badges 
were  not  more  attractive.  We  regret  that  a  body,  to 
whose  courage  and  talents  mankind  has  owed  inestima- 
ble obligations,  had  not  the  lofty  elegance  which  dis- 
tinguished some  of  the  adherents  of  Charles  I.,  or  the  easy 
good  breeding  for  which  the  court  of  Charles  II.  was  cele- 


*  Gerusalemme  Liberata,  xv.  57. 
Vol.  I.— 5 


60  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

brated.  But,  if  we  must  make  our  choice,  we  shall,  like 
Bassanio  in  the  play,  turn  from  the  specious  caskets,  which 
contain  only  the  death's  head  and  the  fool's  head,  and  fix 
our  choice  on  the  plain  leaden  chest  which  conceals  the 
treasure. 

The  Puritans  were  men  whose  minds  had  derived  a  pe- 
culiar character  from  the  daily  contemplation  of  superior 
beings  and  external  interests.  Not  content  with  acknow- 
ledging, in  general  terms,  an  overruling  Providence,  they 
habitually  ascribed  every  event  to  the  will  of  the  Great 
Being,  for  whose  power  nothing  was  too  vast,  for  whose 
inspection  nothing  was  too  minute.  To  know  him,  to 
serve  him^  to  enjoy  him,  was  with  them  the  great  end  of 
existence.  They  rejected  with  contempt  the  ceremonious 
homage  which  other  sects  substituted  for  the  pure  worship 
of  the  soul.  Instead  of  catching  occasional  glimpses  of 
the  Deity  through  an  obscuring  veil,  they  aspired  to  gaze 
full  on  the  intolerable  brightness,  and  to  commune  with 
him  face  to  face.  Hence  originated  their  contempt  for  ter- 
restrial distinctions.  The  difi"erence  between  the  greatest 
and  meanest  of  mankind  seemed  to  vanish,  when  compared 
with  the  boundless  interval  which  separated  the  whole  race 
from  him  on  whom  their  own  eyes  were  constantly  fixed. 
They  recognised  no  title  to  superiority  but  his  favour;  and, 
confident  of  that  favour,  they  despised  all  the  accomplish- 
ments and  all  the  dignities  of  the  world.  If  they  were  un- 
acquainted with  the  works  of  philosophers  and  poets,  they 
were  deeply  read  in  the  oracles  of  God.  If  their  names 
were  not  found  in  the  registers  of  heralds,  they  felt  assured 
that  they  were  recorded  in  the  Book  of  Life.  If  their 
steps  were  not  accompanied  by  a  splendid  train  of  me- 
nials, legions  of  ministering  angels  had  charge  over  them. 
Their  palaces  were  houses  not  made  with  hands :  their 
diadems  crowns  of  glory  which  should  never  fade  away! 
On  the  rich  and  the  eloquent,  on  nobles  and  priests,  they 
looked  down  with  contempt :  for  they  esteemed  themselves 
rich  in  a  more  precious  treasure,  and  eloquent  in  a  more 
sublime  language — nobles  by  the  right  of  an  earlier  crea- 
tion, and  priests  by  the  imposition  of  a  mightier  hand. 
The  very  meanest  of  them  was  a  being  to  whose  fate  a 
mysterious   and   terrible   importance   belonged — on  whose 


MILTON.  51 

slightest  actions  the  spirits  of  light  and  darkness  looked 
with  anxious  interest — who  had  been  destined,  before 
heaven  and  earth  were  created  to  enjoy  a  felicity  which 
should  continue  when  heaven  and  earth  should  have  passed 
away.  Events  which  short-sighted  politicians  ascribed  to 
earthly  causes  had  been  ordained  on  his  account.  For  his 
sake  empires  had  risen,  and  flourished,  and  decayed.  For 
his  sake  the  Almighty  had  proclaimed  his  will  by  the  pen 
of  the  evangelist,  and  the  harp  of  the  prophet.  He  had 
been  rescued  by  no  common  deliverer  from  the  grasp  of  no 
common  foe.  He  had  been  ransomed  hj  the  sweat  of  no 
vulgar  agony,  by  the  blood  of  no  earthly  sacrifice.  It  was 
for  him  that  the  sun  had  been  darkened,  that  the  rocks  had 
been  rent,  that  the  dead  had  arisen,  that  all  nature  had 
shuddered  at  the  sufferings  of  her  expiring  God ! 

Thus  the  Puritan  was  made  up  of  two  different  men,  the 
one  all  self-abasement,  penitence,  gratitude,  passion;  the 
other  proud,  calm,  inflexible,  sagacious.  He  prostrated 
himself  in  the  dust  before  his  Maker;  but  he  set  his  foot 
on  the  neck  of  his  king.  In  his  devotional  retirement,  he 
prayed  with  convulsions,  and  groans,  and  tears.  He  was  half 
maddened  by  glorious  or  terrible  illusions.  He  heard  the 
.yres  of  angels,  or  the  tempting  whispers  of  fiends.  He 
caught  a  gleam  of  the  Beatific  Vision,  or  woke  screaming 
from  the  dreams  of  everlasting  fire.  Like  Vane,  he  thought 
himself  intrusted  with  the  sceptre  of  the  millennial  year. 
Like  Fleetwood,  he  cried  in  the  bitterness  of  his  soul  that 
God  had  hid  his  fiice  from  him.  But  when  he  took  his  seat 
in  the  council  or  girt  on  his  sword  for  war,  these  tempestu- 
ous workings  of  the  soul  had  left  no  perceptible  trace  be- 
hind them.  People,  who  saw  nothing  of  the  godly  but  their 
uncouth  visages,  and  heard  nothing  from  them  but  their 
groans  and  their  whining  hymns,  might  laugh  at  them.  But 
those  had  little  reason  to  laugh  who  encountered  them  in 
the  hall  of  debate,  or  in  the  field  of  battle.  These  fanatics 
brought  to  civil  and  military  affairs  a  coolness  of  judgment 
and  an  immutability  of  purpose  which  some  writers  have 
thought  inconsistent  with  their  religious  zeal,  but  which 
were  in  fact  the  necessary  effects  of  it.  The  intensity  of 
their  feelings  on  one  subject  made  them  tranquil  on  every 
other.     One  overpowering  sentiment  had  subjected  to  itself 


52  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

pity  and  hatred,  ambition  and  fear.  Death  had  lost  its  ter- 
rors and  pleasure  its  charms.  They  had  their  smiles  and 
their  tears,  their  raptures  and  their  sorrows,  but  not  for  the 
things  of  this  world.  Enthusiasm  had  made  them  Stoics, 
had  cleared  their  minds  from  every  vulgar  passion  and 
prejudice,  and  raised  them  above  the  influence  of  danger 
and  of  corruption.  It  sometimes  might  lead  them  to  pursue 
unwise  ends,  but  never  to  choose  unwise  means.  They 
went  through  the  world  like  Sir  Artegale's  iron  man  Talus 
with  his  flail,  crushing  and  trampling  down  oppressors, 
mingling  with  human  beings,  but  having  neither  part  nor 
lot  in  human  infirmities;  insensible  to  fatigue,  to  pleasure, 
and  to  pain ;  not  to  be  pierced  by  any  weapon,  not  to  be 
withstood  by  any  barrier. 

Such  we  believe  to  have  been  the  character  of  the  Puri- 
tans. We  perceive  the  absurdity  of  their  manners.  We 
dislike  the  sullen  gloom  of  their  domestic  habits.  We  ac- 
knowledge  that  the  tone  of  their  minds  was  often  injured  by 
straining  after  things  to  high  for  mortal  reach.  And  we 
know  that,  in  spite  of  their  hatred  of  Popery,  they  too  often 
fell  into  the  worst  vices  of  that  bad  system,  intolerance  and 
extravagant  austerity — that  they  had  their  anchorites  and 
their  crusades,  their  Dunstans  and  their  De  Montforts,  their 
Dominies  and  their  Escobars.  Yet  when  all  circumstances 
are  taken  into  consideration,  we  do  not  hesitate  to  pronounce 
them  a  brave,  a  wise,  an  honest,  and  a  useful  body. 

The  Puritans  espoused  the  cause  of  civil  liberty  mainly 
because  it  was  the  cause  of  religion.  There  was  another 
party,  by  no  means  numerous,  but  distinguished  by  learn- 
ing and  ability,  which  co-operated  with  them  on  very  dif- 
ferent principles.  We  speak  of  those  whom  Cromwell  was 
accustomed  to  call  the  Heathens,  men  who  were,  in  the 
phraseology  of  that  time,  doubting  Thomases  or  careless 
Gallios  with  regard  to  religious  subjects,  but  passionate 
worshippers  of  freedom.  Heated  by  the  study  of  ancient 
literature,  they  set  up  their  country  as  their  idol,  and  pro- 
posed to  themselves  the  heroes  of  Plutarch  as  their  exam- 
ples. They  seem  to  have  borne  some  resemblance  to  the 
Brissotines  of  the*  French  Revolution.  But  it  is  not  very 
easy  to  draw  the  line  of  distinction  between  them  and  their 
devout  associates,  whose  tone  and  manner  they  sometimes 


MILTON.  53 

found  it  convenient  to  affect^  and  sometimes,  it  is  probable, 
imperceptibly  adopted. 

We  now  come  to  the  Royalists.  We  shall  attempt  to 
speak  of  them  as  we  have  spoken  of  their  antagonists,  with 
perfect  candour.  We  shall  not  charge  upon  a  whole  party 
the  profligacy  and  baseness  of  the  horseboy's,  gamblers,  and 
bravoes,  whom  the  hope  of  license  and  plunder  attracted 
from  all  the  dens  of  Whitefriars  to  the  standard  of  Charles, 
and  who  disgraced  their  associates  by  excesses  which,  under 
the  stricter  discipline  of  the  Parliamentary  armies,  were 
never  tolerated.  We  will  select  a  more  favourable  specimen. 
Thinking,  as  we  do,  that  the  cause  of  the  king  was  the 
cause  of  bigotry  and  tyranny,  we  yet  cannot  refrain  from 
looking  with  complacency  on  the  character  of  the  honest 
old  Cavaliers.  We  feel  a  national  pride  in  comparing  them 
with  the  instruments  which  the  despots  of  other  countries 
are  compelled  to  employ,  with  the  mutes  who  throng  their 
antechambers,  and  the  Janissaries  who  mount  guard  at  their 
gat(*s.  Our  royalist  countrymen  were  not  heartless,  dang- 
ling courtiers,  bowing  at  every  step,  and  simpering  at  every 
word.  They  were  not  mere  machines  for  destruction 
dressed  up  in  uniforms,  caned  into  skill,  intoxicated  into 
valour,  defending  without  love,  destroying  without  hatred. 
There  was  a  freedom  in  their  subserviency,  a  nobleness  in 
their  very  degradation.  The  sentiment  of  individual  inde- 
pendence was  strong  within  them.  They  were  indeed  mis- 
led, but  by  no  base  or  selfish  motive.  Compassion  and 
romantic  honour,  the  prejudices  of  childhood,  and  the  vene- 
rable names  of  history,  threw  over  them  a  spell  potent  as 
that  of  Duessa;  and  like  the  Red  Cross  Knight,  they  thought 
that  they  were  doing  battle  for  an  injured  beauty,  while 
they  defended  a  false  and  loathsome  sorceress.  In  truth, 
they  scarcely  entered  at  all  into  the  merits  of  the  political 
question.  It  was  not  for  a  treacherous  king  or  an  intolerant 
church  that  they  fougnt;  but  for  the  old  banner  which  had 
waved  in  so  many  battles  over  the  heads  of  their  fathers, 
and  for  the  altars  at  which  they  had  received  the  hands  of 
their  brides.  Though  nothing  could  be  more  erroneous 
than  their  political  opinions,  they  possessed  in  a  far  greater 
degree  than  their  adversaries,  those  qualities  which  are  the 
grace  of  private  life.    With  many  of  the  vices  of  the  Round 


54  MAC AUL ay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Table,  tliey  had  also  many  of  its  virtues,  courtesy,  gene* 
rosity,  veracity,  tenderness,  and  respect  for  women.  They 
had  far  more  both  of  profound  and  of  polite  learning  than 
the  Puritans.  Their  manners  were  more  engaging,  their 
tempers  more  amiable,  their  tastes  more  elegant,  and  their 
households  more  cheerful. 

Milton  did  not  strictly  belong  to  any  of  the  classes  which 
we  have  described.  He  was  not  a  Puritan.  He  was  not 
a  freethinker.  He  was  not  a  Cavalier.  In  his  character  the 
noblest  qualities  of  every  party  were  combined  in  harmoni- 
ous union.  From  the  parliament  and  from  the  court,  from 
the  conventicle  and  from  the  Gothic  cloister,  from  the 
gloomy  and  sepulchral  circles  of  the  lloundheads,  and  from 
the  Christmas  revel  of  the  hospitable  Cavalier,  his  nature 
selected  and  drew  to  itself  whatever  was  great  and  good, 
while  it  rejected  all  the  base  and  pernicious  ingredients  by 
which  those  fine  elements  were  defiled.  Like  the  Puritans, 
he  lived 

"As  ever  in  his  great  Taskmaster's  eye." 

Like  them,  he  kept  his  mind  continually  fixed  on  an  Al- 
mighty Judge  and  an  eternal  reward.  And  hence  he  ac- 
quired their  contempt  of  external  circumstances,  their  forti- 
tude, their  tranquillity,  their  inflexible  resolution.  But  not 
the  coolest  sceptic  or  the  most  profane  scoiFer  was  more 
perfectly  free  from  the  contagion  of  their  frantic  delusions, 
their  savage  manners,  their  ludicrous  jargon,  their  scorn  of 
science,  and  their  aversion  to  pleasure.  Hating  tyranny 
with  a  perfect  hatred,  he  had  nevertheless  all  the  estimable 
and  ornamental  qualities  which  were  almost  entirely  mono- 
polized by  the  party  of  the  tyrant.  There  was  none  who 
had  a  stronger  sense  of  the  value  of  literature,  a  finer  relish 
for  every  elegant  amusement,  or  a  more  chivalrous  delicacy 
of  honour  and  love.  Though  his  opinions  were  democratic, 
his  tastes  and  his  associates  were  such  as  harmonize  best 
with  monarchy  and  aristocracy.  He  was  under  the  influ- 
ence of  all  the  feelings  by  which  the  gallant  Cavaliers  were 
misled.  But  of  those  feelings  he  was  the  master,  and  not 
the  slave.  Like  the  hero  of  Homer,  he  enjoyed  all  the  j^lea- 
sures  of  fascination;  but  he  was  not  fascinated.    He  listened 


MILTON.  55 

to  the  song  of  the  Syrens;  yet  he  glided  by  without  being 
seduced  to  their  fatal  shore.  He  tasted  the  cup  of  Circe ; 
but  he  bore  about  him  a  sure  antidote  against  the  effects  of 
its  bewitching  sweetness.  The  illusions  which  captivated 
his  imagination  never  impaired  his  reasoning  powers.  The 
statesman  was  a  proof  against  the  splendour,  the  solemnity, 
and  the  romance  which  enchanted  the  poet.  Any  person 
who  will  contrast  the  sentiments  expressed  in  his  Treatises 
on  Prelacy,  with  the  exquisite  lines  on  ecclesiastical  archi- 
tecture and  music  in  the  Penseroso,  which  were  published 
about  the  same  time,  will  understand  our  meaning.  This 
is  an  inconsistency  which,  more  than  any  thing  else,  raises 
his  charact€r  in  our  estimation ;  because  it  shows  how  many 
private  tastes  and  feelings  he  sacrificed  in  order  to  do  what 
he  considered  his  duty  to  mankind.  It  is  the  very  struggle 
of  the  noble  Othello.  His  heart  relents ;  but  his  hand  is 
firm.  He  does  naught  in  hate,  but  all  in  honour.  He 
kisses  the  beautiful  deceiver  before  he  destroys  her. 

That  from  which  the  public  character  of  Milton  derives 
its  great  and  peculiar  splendour  still  remains  to  be  men- 
tioned. If  he  exerted  himself  to  overthrow  a  forsworn 
king  and  a  persecuting  hierarchy,  he  exerted  himself  in  con- 
junction with  others.  But  the  glory  of  the  battle,  which  he 
fought  for  that  species  of  freedom  which  is  the  most  valuable, 
and  which  was  then  the  least  understood,  the  freedom  of  the 
human  mind,  is  all  his  own.  Thousands  and  ten  of  thousands 
among  kis  contemporaries  raised  their  voices  against  ship- 
money  and  the  star-chamber.  But  there  were  few  indeed  who 
discerned  the  more  fearful  evils  of  moral  and  intellectual 
slavery,  and  the  benefits  which  would  result  from  the  liberty 
of  the  press  and  the  unfettered  exercise  of  private  judgment. 
These  were  the  objects  which  Milton  justly  conceived  to  be 
the  most  important.  He  was  desirous  that  the  people  should 
think  for  themselves  as  well  as  tax  themselves,  and  be  eman- 
cipated from  the  dominion  of  prejudice  as  well  as  from  that 
of  Charles.  He  knew  that  those  who,  with  the  best  intentions, 
overlooked  these  schemes  of  reform,  and  contented  themselves 
with  pulling  down  the  king  and  imprisoning  the  malignants, 
acted  like  the  heedless  brothers  in  his  own  poem,  who,  in 
their  eagerness  to  disperse  the  train  of  the  sorcerer,  neg- 
lected the  means  of  liberating  the  captive.     They  thought 


50  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

only  of  conquering  when  tliey  should  have  thought  of  disen- 
chanting. 

"Oh,  ye  mistook!  You  sliould  have  snatched  the  wand! 
Without  the  rod  reversed, 
And  backward  mutters  of  dissevering  power, 
We  cannot  free  the  lady  that  sits  here 
Bound  in  strong  fetters  fixed  and  motionless." 

To  reverse  the  rod,  to  spell  the  charm  backward,  to 
break  the  ties  which  bound  a  stupetied  people  to  the  seat  of 
enchantment,  was  the  noble  aim  of  Milton.  To  this  all  his 
public  conduct  was  directed.  For  this  he  joined  the  Pres- 
byterians— for  this  he  forsook  them.  He  fought  their 
perilous  battles ;  but  he  turned  away  with  disdain  from  their 
insolent  triumph.  He  saw  that  they,  like  those  whom  they 
had  vanquished,  were  hostile  to  the  liberty  of  thought.  He 
therefore  joined  the  Independents,  and  called  upon  Crom- 
well to  break  the  secular  chain,  and  to  save  free  conscience 
from  the  paw  of  the  Presbyterian  wolf.*  With  a  view  to 
the  same  great  object,  he  attacked  the  licensing  system  in 
that  sublime  treatise  which  every  statesman  should  wear 
as  a  sign  upon  his  hand,  and  as  frontlets  between  his  eyes. 
His  attacks  were,  in  general,  directed  less  against  particular 
abuses  than  against  those  deeply-seated  errors  on  which 
almost  all  abuses  are  founded,  the  servile  worship  of  emi- 
nent men  and  the  irrational  dread  of  innovation. 

That  he  might  shake  the  foundations  of  these  debasing 
sentiments  more  efiectually,  he  always  selected  for  himself" 
the  boldest  literary  services.  He  never  came  up  to  the  rear, 
when  the  outworks  had  been  carried  and  the  breach  entered. 
He  pressed  into  the  forlorn  hope.  At  the  begining  of  the 
changes,  he  wrote  with  incomparable  energy  and  eloquence 
against  the  bishops.  But,  when  his  opinions  seemed  likely 
to  prevail,  he  passed  on  to  other  subjects,  and  abandoned 
prelacy  to  the  crowd  of  writers  who  now  hastened  to  insult 
a  falling  party.  There  is  no  more  hazardous  enterprise  than 
that  of  bearing  the  torch  of  truth  into  those  dark  and  infected 
recesses  in  which  no  light  has  ever  shone.  But  it  was  the 
choice  and  the  pleasure  of  Milton  to  penetrate  the  noisome 
vapours,  and  to  brave  the  terrible  explosion.     Those  who 

*  Sonnet  to  Cromwell. 


MILTOX.  57 

most  disapprove  of  his  opinions  must  respect  the  hardihood 
with  which  he  maintained  them.  He,  in  general,  left  to 
others  the  credit  of  expounding  and  defending  the  popular 
parts  of  his  religious  and  political  creed.  He  took  his 
own  stand  upon  those  which  the  great  body  of  his  coun- 
trymen reprobated  as  criminal,  or  derided  as  paradoxical. 
He  stood  up  for  divorce  and  regicide.  He  ridiculed  the 
Eikon.  He  attacked  the  prevailing  systems  of  education. 
His  radiant  and  beneficent  career  resembled  that  of  the 
god  of  light  and  fertility, 

<'  Nitor  in  adversvim;  nee  me,  qui  caetera,  vincit 
Impetus,  et  rapido  contrarius  evehor  orbi." 

It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  prose  writings  of  Milton 
should,  in  our  time,  be  so  little  read.  As  compositions, 
they  deserve  the  attention  of  every  man  who  wishes  to  be- 
come acquainted  with  the  full  power  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. They  abound  with  passages,  compared  with  which 
tiie  finest  declamations  of  Burke  sink  into  insignificance. 
They  are  a  perfect  field  of  cloth  of  gold.  The  style  is  stiff", 
with  gorgeous  embroidery.  Not  even  in  the  earlier  books 
of  the  Paradise  Lost  has  he  ever  risen  higher  than  in  those 
parts  of  his  controversial  works,  in  which  his  feelings,  ex- 
cited by  conflict,  find  a  vent  in  bursts  of  devotional  and  lyric 
rapture.  It  is,  to  borrow  his  own  majestic  language,  "  a 
sevenfold  chorus  of  hallelujahs  and  harping  symphonies.'^* 

AVe  had  intended  to  look  more  closely  at  their  perform- 
ances, to  analyze  the  peculiarities  of  their  diction,  to  dwell 
at  some  length  on  the  sublime  wisdom  of  the  xireopagitica, 
and  the  nervous  rhetoric  of  the  Iconoclast,  and  to  point  out 
some  of  those  magnificent  passages  which  occur  in  the 
Treatise  of  Reformation  and  the  Animadversions  on  the 
Eemonstrant,  But  the  length  to  which  our  remarks  have 
already  extended  renders  this  impossible. 

We  must  conclude.  And  yet  we  can  scarcely  tear  our- 
selves away  from  the  subject.  The  days  immediately  fol- 
lowing the  publication  of  this  relic  of  Milton  appear  to  bo 


*Thc  Reason  of  Church  Government  urged  against  prelacy, 
Book  II. 


68  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

peculiarly  set  apart  and  consecrated  to  his  memory.  And 
wo  shall  scarcely  be  censured  if,  on  this  his  festival,  we  bo 
found  lingering  near  his  shrine,  how  worthless  soever  may 
be  the  ofFerini;-  which  we  brinsr  to  it.  While  this  book  lies 
on  our  table,  we  seem  to  be  contemporaries  of  the  great 
poet.  We  are  transported  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  back. 
We  can  almost  fancy  that  we  are  visiting  him  in  his  small 
lodging;  that  we  see  him  sitting  at  the  old  organ  beneath 
the  faded  green  hangings;  that  we  can  catch  the  quick 
twinkle  of  his  eyes,  rolling  in  vain  to  find  the  day;  that  we 
are  reading  in  the  lines  of  his  noble  countenance  the  proud 
and  mournful  history  of  his  glory  and  his  afiliction  !  We 
image  to  ourselves  the  breathless  silence  in  which  we  should 
listen  to  his  slightest  word;  the  passionate  veneration  with 
which  we  should  kneel  to  kiss  his  hand  and  weep  upon  it; 
the  earnestness  with  which  we  should  endeavour  to  console 
him,  if  indeed  such  a  spirit  could  need  consolation,  for  the 
neglect  of  an  age  unworthy  of  his  talents  and  his  virtues; 
the  eagerness  with  which  we  should  contest  with  his  daugh- 
ters, or  with  his  Quaker  friend,  Elwood,  the  privilege  of 
reading  Homer  to  him,  or  of  taking  down  the  immortal  ac- 
cents which  flowed  from  his  lips. 

These  are  perhaps  foolish  feelings.  Yet  we  cannot  be 
ashamed  of  them ;  nor  shall  we  be  sorry  if  what  we  have 
written  shall  in  any  degree  excite  them  in  other  minds. 
We  are  not  much  in  the  habit  of  idolizing  either  the  living 
or  the  dead.  And  we  think  that  there  is  no  more  certain 
indication  of  a  weak  and  ill-regulated  intellect,  than  that 
propensity  which,  for  want  of  a  better  name,  we  will  ven- 
ture to  christen  BosiceUism.  But  there  are  a  few  characters 
which  have  stood  the  closest  scrutiny  and  the  severest  tests, 
which  have  been  tried  in  the  furnace  and  have  proved  pure, 
which  have  been  weighed  in  the  balance  and  have  not  been 
found  wanting,  which  have  been  declared  sterling  by  the 
general  consent  of  mankind,  and  which  are  visibly  stamped 
with  the  image  and  superscription  of  the  Most  High.  These 
great  men  we  trust  that  we  know  how  to  prize;  and  of  these 
was  Milton.  The  sight  of  his  books,  the  sound  of  his  name, 
are  refreshing  to  us.  His  thoughts  resemble  those  celestial 
fruits  and  flowers  which  the  Virgin  Martyr  of  Massinger 
sent  down  from  the  gardens  of  Paradise  to  the  earth,  dis- 


MILTON.  59 

tinguished  from  the  productions  of  other  soils,  not  only  hy 
their  superior  bloom  and  sweetness,  but  by  their  miraculous 
efficacy  to  invigorate  and  to  heal.  They  are  powerful,  not 
only  to  delight,  but  to  elevate  and  purify.  Nor  do  we  envy 
the  man  who  can  study  either  the  life  or  the  writings  of  the 
great  Poet  and  Patriot,  without  aspiring  to  emulate,  not 
indeed  the  sublime  works  with  which  his  genius  has  en- 
riched our  literature,  but  the  zeal  with  which  he  laboured 
for  the  public  good,  the  fortitude  with  which  he  endured 
every  private  calamity,  the  lofty  disdain  with  which  he 
looked  down  on  temptation  and  dangers,  the  deadly  hatred 
which  he  bore  to  bigots  and  tyrants,  and  the  faith  which  ho 
so  sternly  kept  with  his  country  and  with  his  fame. 


Macljtnutlli.* 

[Edinhiirgh  Beview.} 

Those  who  have  attended  to  the  practice  of  our  literary 
tribunal  are  well  aware  that,  by  means  of  certain  legal  fic- 
tions similar  to  those  of  Westminster  Hall,  we  are  frequently 
enabled  to  take  cognisance  of  cases  lying  beyond  the  sphere 
of  our  original  jurisdiction.  We  need  hardly  say,  therefore, 
that,  in  the  present  instance,  M.  Perier  is  merely  a  Eichard 
Roe — that  his  name  is  used  for  the  sole  purpose  of  bringing 
Machiavelli  into  court — and  that  he  will  not  be  mentioned  in 
any  subsequent  stage  of  the  proceedings. 

We  doubt  whether  any  name  in  literary  history  be  so 
generally  odious  as  that  of  the  man  whose  character  and 
writings  we  now  propose  to  consider.  The  terms  in  which 
he  is  commonly  described  would  seem  to  import  that  he 
was  the  Tempter,  the  Evil  Principle,  the  discoverer  of  am- 
bition and  revenge,  the  original  inventor  of  perjury;  that, 
before  the  publication  of  his  fatal  Prince,  there  had  never 
been  a  hypocrite,  a  tyrant,  or  a  traitor,  a  simulated  virtue 
or  a  convenient  crime.  One  writer  gravely  assures  us,  that 
Maurice  of  Saxony  learned  all  his  fraudulent  policy  from 
that  execrable  volume.  Another  remarks  that  since  it  was 
translated  into  Turkish,  the  Sultans  have  been  more  ad- 
dicted than  formerly  to  the  custom  of  strangling  their 
brothers.  Our  own  foolish  Lord  Lyttleton  charges  the  poor 
Florentine  with  the  manifold  treasons  of  the  House  of 
Guise,  and  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew.  Several 
authors  have  hinted  that  the  Gunpowder  Plot  is  to  be  pri- 
marily attributed  to  his  doctrines,  and  seem  to  think  that 
his  effigy  ought  to  be  substituted  for  that  of  Guy  Fawkes,  in 

■^  (Euvres   completes   de  3Iachiavel,  traduites  par  J.   V.   Pkrier. 
Paris,  1825. 
60 


MACHIAVELLI.  61 

those  processions  by  which  the  ingenuous  youth  of  England 
annually  commemorate  the  preservation  of  the  Three  Es- 
tates. The  Church  of  Rome  has  pronounced  his  works 
accursed  things.  Nor  have  our  own  countrymen  been  back- 
ward in  testifying  their  opinion  of  his  merits.  Out  of  his 
surname  they  have  coined  an  epithet  for  a  knave — and 
out  of  his  Christian  name  a  synonyme  for  the  Devil.* 

It  is  indeed  scarcely  possible  for  any  person,  not  well 
acquainted  with  the  history  and  literature  of  Italy,  to  read 
without  horror  and  amazement,  the  celebrated  treatise  which 
has  brought  so  much  obloquy  on  the  name  of  Machiavelli. 
Such  a  display  of  wicliedhess,  naked,  yet  not  ashamed, 
such  cool,  judicious,  scientific  atrocity,  seem  rather  to  be- 
long to  a  fiend  than  to  the  most  depraved  of  men.  Prin- 
ciples which  the  most  hardened  ruffian  would  scarcely  hint 
to  his  most  trusted  accomplice,  or  avow,  without  the  dis- 
guise of  some  palliating  sophism,  even  to  his  own  mind, 
are  professed  without  the  slightest  circumlocution,  and  as- 
sumed as  the  fundamental  axioms  of  all  political  science. 

It  is  not  strange  that  ordinary  readers  should  regard  the 
author  of  such  a  book  as  the  most  depraved  and  shameless 
of  human  beings.  Wise  men,  however,  have  always  been 
inclined  to  look  with  great  suspicion  on  the  angels  and  de- 
mons of  the  multitude ;  and  in  the  present  instance,  several 
circumstances  have  led  even  superficial  observers  to  ques- 
tion the  justice  of  the  vulgar  decision.  It  is  notorious  that 
Machiavelli  was,  through  life,  a  zealous  republican.  In  the 
same  year  in  which  he  composed  his  manual  of  Kingcraft, 
he  suffered  imprisonment  and  torture  in  the  cause  of  public 
liberty.  It  seems  inconceivable  that  the  martyr  of  freedom 
should  have  designedly  acted  as  the  apostle  of  tyranny. 
Several  eminent  writers  have,  therefore,  endeavoured  to 
detect,  in  this  unfortunate  performance,  some  concealed 
meaning  more  consistent  with  the  character  and  conduct 
of  the  author  than  that  which  appears  at  the  first  glance. 

■*  Nick  Macliiavel  had  ne'er  a  trick, 
Tlio'  he  gave  his  name  to  our  old  Nick. 

Hudibras,  Part  III.  Canto  I. 
But,  we  believe,  there  is  a  schism  on  this  subject  among  the  Anti- 
quaries. 
Vol.  I.— « 


62  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

One  hypotliesis  is,  that  Machiavelli  intended  to  practise 
on  the  young  Lorenzo  de  Medici  a  fraud,  similar  to  that 
which  Sunderland  is  said  to  have  employed  against  our 
James  the  Second, — that  he  urged  his  pujDil  to  violent  and 
perfidious  measures,  as  the  surest  means  of  accelerating  the 
moment  of  deliverance  and  revenge.  Another  supposition, 
which  Lord  Bacon  seems  to  countenance,  is  that  the  trea- 
tise was  merely  a  piece  of  grave  irony,  intended  to  warn 
nations  against  the  arts  of  ambitious  men.  It  would  be 
easy  to  show  that  neither  of  these  solutions  is  consistent 
with  many  passages  in  the  Prince  itself.  But  the  most 
decisive  refutation  is  that  which  is  furnished  by  the  other 
works  of  Machiavelli  In  all  the  writings  which  he  gave 
to  the  public,  and  in  all  those  which  the  research  of  editors 
has,  in  the  course  of  three  centuries,  discovered — in  his 
Comedies,  designed  for  the  entertainment  of  the  multitude 
— in  his  Comments  on  Livy,  intended  for  the  pe.i;usal  of 
the  most  enthusiastic  patriots  of  Florence — in  his  His- 
tory, inscribed  to  one  of  the  most  amiable  and  estimable 
of  the  Popes — in  his  Public  Despatches — in  his  private 
Memoranda,  the  same  obliquity  of  moral  principle  for 
which  the  Prince  is  so  severely  censured  is  more  or  less 
discernible.  We  doubt  whether  it  would  be  possible  to 
find,  in  all  the  many  volumes  of  his  compositions,  a  single 
expression  indicating  that  dissimulation  and  treachery  had 
ever  struck  him  as  discreditable!      '"' 

After  this  it  may  seem  ridiculous  to  say,  that  we  are  ac- 
quainted with  few  writings  which  exhibit  so  much  elevation 
of  sentiment,  so  pure  and  warm  a  zeal  for  the  public  good, 
or  so  just  a  view  of  the  duties  and  rights  of  citizens,  as  those 
of  Machiavelli.  Yet  so  it  is.  And  even  from  the  Prince 
itself  we  could  select  many  passages  in  support  of  this  re- 
mark. To  a  reader  of  our  age  and  country,  this  inconsist- 
ency is,  at  first,  perfectly  bewildering.  The  whole  man 
seems  to  be  an  enigma — a  grotesque  assemblage  of  incon- 
gruous qualities — selfishness  and  generosity,  cruelty  and 
benevolence,  craft  and  simplicity,  abject  villany  and  roman- 
tic heroism.  One  sentence  is  such  as  a  veteran  diplomatist 
would  scarcely  write  in  cipher  for  the  direction  of  his  most 
confidential  spy:  the  next  seems  to  be  extracted  from  a 
theme  composed  by  an  ardent  schoolboy  on  the  death  of 


MACHIAVELLt.  63 

Leonidas.  An  act  of  dexterous  perfidy,  and  an  act  of  pa- 
triotic self-devotion,  call  forth  the  same  kind  and  the  same 
degree  of  respectful  admiration.  The  moral  sensibility  of 
the  writer  seems  at  once  to  be  morbidly  obtuse  and  mor- 
bidly acute.  Two  characters  altogether  dissimilar  are 
united  in  him.  They  are  not  merely  joined,  but  interwoven. 
They  are  the  warp  and  the  woof  of  his  mind;  and  their 
combination,  like  that  of  the  variegated  threads  in  shot  silk, 
gives  to  the  whole  texture  a  glancing  and  ever-changing 
appearance.  The  explanation  might  have  been  easy,  if  he 
had  been  a  very  weak  or  a  very  affected  man.  But  he  was 
evidently  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  His  works  prove  be- 
yond all  contradiction,  that  his  understanding  was  strong,  his 
taste  pure,  and  his  sense  of  the  ridiculous  exquisitely  keen. 

This  is  strange — and  yet  the  strangest  is  behind.  There 
is  no  reason  whatever  to  think,  that  those  amongst  whom 
he  lived  saw  any  thing  shocking  or  incongruous  in  his  writ- 
ings. Abundant  proofs  remain  of  the  high  estimation  in 
which  both  his  works  and  his  person  were  held  by  the  most 
respectable  among  his  contemporaries.  Clement  the  Se- 
venth patronised  the  publication  of  those  very  books  which 
the  Council  of  Trent,  in  the  following  generation,  pro- 
nounced unfit  for  the  perusal  of  Christians.  Some  mem- 
bers of  the  democratical  party  censured  the  secretary  for 
dedicating  the  Prince  to  a  patron  who  bore  the  unpoplar 
name  of  Medici.  But  to  those  immoral  doctrines,  which 
have  since  called  forth  such  severe  reprehensions,  no 
exception  appears  to  have  been  taken.  The  cry  against 
them  was  first  raised  beyond  the  Alps — and  seems  to 
have  been  heard  with  amazement  in  Italy.  The  earliest 
assailant,  as  far  as  we  are  aware,  was  a  countryman  of 
our  own,  Cardinal  Pole.  The  author  of  the  Anti-Machia- 
velli  was  a  French  Protestant. 

It  is,  therefore,  in  the  state  of  moral  feeling  among  the 
Italians  of  those  times,  that  we  must  seek  for  the  real  expla- 
nation of  what  seems  most  mysterious  in  the  life  and  writ- 
ings of  this  remarkable  man.  As  this  is  a  subject  which 
suggests  many  interesting  considerations,  both  political  and 
metaphysical,  we  shall  make  no  apology  for  discussing  it 
at  some  length. 

During  the  gloomy  and  disastrous  centuries  which  fol- 
lowed the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Italy  had  pre- 


64  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

served,  in  a  far  greater  degree  tlian  any  other  part  of  "West- 
ern Europe,  the  traces  of  ancient  civilization.  The  night 
which  descended  upon  her  was  the  night  of  an  arctic  sum- 
mer:— the  dawn  began  to  reappear  before  the  last  reflec- 
tion of  the  preceding  sunset  had  faded  from  the  horizon.  It 
was  in  the  time  of  the  French  Merovingians,  and  of  the  SazfitO 
Heptarchy,  that  ignorance  and  I'erocity  seemed  to  have  done 
their  worst.  Yet  even  then  the  Neapolitan  provinces,  re- 
cognising the  authority  of  the  Eastern  Empire,  preserved 
something  of  Eastern  knowledge  and  refinement.  Rome, 
protected  by  the  sacred  character  of  its  pontiffs,  enjoyed 
at  least  comparative  security  and  repose.  "lEven  in  those 
regions  where  the  sanguinary  Lombards  had  fixed  their  mo- 
narchy, there  was^'IrrrctTCTparably  more  of  wealth,  of  infor- 
mation, of  i^hysical  comfort,  and  of  social  order,  than  could 
be  found  in  Gaul,  Britain,  or  Germany. 

That  which  most  distinguished  Italy  from  the  neigh- 
bouring countries  was  the  importance  which  the  population 
of  the  towns,  from  a  very  early  period,  began  to  acquire. 
Some  cities,  founded  in  wild  and  remote  situations,  by 
fugitives  who  had  escaped  from  the  rage  of  the  barbarians, 
preserved  their  freedom  by  their  obscurity,  till  they  be- 
came able  to  preserve  it  by  their  power.  Others  seemed 
to  have  retained,  under  all  the  changing  dynasties  of  in- 
vaders, under  Odoacer  and  Theodoric,  Narses  and  Alboin, 
the  munici23al  institutions  which  had  been  conferred  on 
them  by  the  liberal  policy  of  the  Great  Republic.  In  pro- 
vinces which  the  central  government  was  too  feeble  either 
to  protect  or  to  oppress,  these  institutions  fii'st  acquired  sta- 
bility and  vigour.  The  citizens,  defended  by  their  walls  and 
governed  by  their  own  magistrates  and  their  own  by-laws, 
enjoyed  a  considerable  share  of  republican  independence. 
Thus  a  strong  democratic  spirit  was  called  into  action. 
The  Carlovingian  sovereigns  were  too  imbecile  to  subdue  it. 
The  generous  policy  of  Otho  encouraged  it.  It  might  per- 
haps have  been  suppressed  by  a  close  coalition  between  the 
Church  and  the  Empire.  It  was  fostered  and  invigorated 
by  their  disputes.  In  the  twelfth  century  it  attained  its 
full  vigour,  and,  after  a  long  and  doubtful  conflict,  it  triumph- 
ed over  the  abilities  and  courage  of  the  Swabian  Princes. 

The  assistance  of  the  ecclesiastical  'power~had  greatly 
contributed  to  the   success  of  the  Guelfs.     That  success 


MACHIAVELLI.  65 

would,  however,  have  been  a  doubtful  good,  if  its  only  effect 
had  been  to  substitute  a  moral  for  a  political  servitude,  to 
exalt  the  Popes  at  the  expense  of  the  Caesars.  Happily  the 
public  mind  of  Italy  had  long  contained  the  seeds  of  free 
opinions,  which  were  now  rapidly  developed  by  the  genial 
influence  of  free  institutions.  The  people  of  that  country 
had  observed  the  whole  machinery  of  the  church,  its  saints 
and  its  miracles,  its  lofty  pretensions  and  its  splendid  cere- 
monial, its  worthless  blessings  and  its  harmless  curses,  too 
long  and  too  closely  to  be  duped.  They  stood  behind  the 
scenes  on  which  others  were  gazing  with  childish  awe  and 
interest.  They  witnessed  the  arrangement  of  the  pulleys, 
and  the  manufacture  of  the  thunders.  They  saw  the  natural 
faces  and  heard  the  natural  voices  of  the  actors.  Distant 
nations  looked  on  the  Pope  as  the  vicegerent  of  the  Al- 
mighty, the  oracle  of  the  All-wise,  the  umpire'  from  whose 
decisions,  in  the  disputes  either  of  theologians  or  of  kings, 
no  Christian  ought  to  appeal.  The  Italians  were  acquainted 
with  all  the  follies  of  his  youth,  and  with  all  the  dishonest 
arts  by  which  he  had  attained  power.  They  knew  how 
often  he  had  employed  the  kej's  of  the  church  to  release 
himself  from  the  most  sacred  engagements,  and  its  wealth 
to  pamper  his  mistresses  and  nephews.  The  doctrines  and 
rights  of  the  established  religion  they  treated  with  decent 
reverence.  But  though  they  still  called  themselves  Catho- 
lics, they  had  ceased  to  be  Papists.  Those  spiritual  arms, 
which  carried  terror  into  the  palaces  and  camps  of  the 
proudest  sovereigns,  excited  only  their  contempt.  When 
Alexander  commanded  our  Henry  the  Second  to  submit  to  the 
lash  before  the  tomb  of  a  rebellious  subject,  he  was  himself 
an  exile.  The  Piomans,  apprehending  that  he  entertained 
designs  against  their  liberties,  had  driven  him  from  their 
city;  and,  though  he  solemnly  promised  to  confine  himself 
for  the  future  to  his  spiritual  functions,  they  still  refused  to 
re-admit  him. 

In  every  other  part  of  Europe,  a  large  and  powerful  privi- 
leged class  trampled  on  the  people  and  defied  the  govern- 
ment. But  in  the  most  flourishing  parts  of  Italy  the  feudal 
nobles  were  reduced  to  comparative  insignificance.  In 
Bome  districts  they  took  shelter  under  the  protection  of  the 

6* 


66  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

powerful  commonwealths  whicli  they  were  unable  to  oppose, 
and  gradually  sunk  into  the  mass  of  burghers.  In  others 
they  possessed  great  influence;  but  it  was  an  influence 
widely  difi'erent  from  that  which  was  exercised  by  the  chief- 
tains of  the  Transalpine  kingdoms.  They  were  not  petty 
princes,  but  emiiient'  citizens.  Instead  of  strengthening 
their  fastnesses  among  the  mountains,  they  embellished  their 
places  in  the  market-place.  The  state  of  society  in  the 
Neapolitan  doaiinions,  and  in  some  parts  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
State,  more  nearly  resembled  that  which  existed  in  the  great 
monarchies  of  Europe.  But  the  governments  of  Lombardy 
and  Tuscany,  through  all  their  revolutions,  preserved  a 
difi*erent  character.  A  people,  when  assembled  in  a  town, 
is  far  more  formidable  to  its  rulers  than  when  dispersed  over 
a  wide  extent  of  country.  The  most  arbitrary  of  the  Caesars 
found  it  necessary  to  feed  and  divert  the  inhabitants  of  their 
unwieldy  capital  at  the  expense  of  the  provinces.  The 
citizens  of  Madrid  have  more  than  once  besieged  their  sove- 
reign in  his  own  palace,,  and  extorted  from  him  the  most 
humiliating  concessions.  The  sultans  have  often  been  com- 
pelled to  propitiate  the  furious  rabble  of  Constantinople 
with  the  head  of  an  unpopular  vizier.  From  the  same 
cause  there  was  a  certain  tinge  of  democracy  in  the  monar- 
chies and  aristocracies  of  Northern  Italy. 

Thus  liberty,  partially,  indeed,  and  transiently,  revisited 
Italy;  and  with  liberty  came  commerce  and  empire,  science 
and  taste,  all  the  comforts  and  all  the  ornaments  of  life. 
The  crusades,  from  which  the  inhabitants  of  other  countries 
gained  nothing  but  relics  and  wounds,  brought  the  rising 
commonwealths  of  the  Adriatic  and  Tyrrhene  seas  a  large 
increase  of  wealth,  doniinion,  and  knowledge.  '  Their  moral 
and  their  geographical  position  enabled  them  to  profit  alike 
by  the  barbarism  of  the  West  and  the  civilization  of  the 
East.  Their  ships  covered  every  sea.  Their  factories  rose 
on  every  shore.  Their  money-changers  set  their  tables  in 
every  city.  Manufactures  flourished.  Banks  were  esta- 
blished. The  operations  of  the  commercial  machine  were 
facilitated  by  many  useful  and  beautiful  inventions.  We 
doubt  whether  any  country  of  Europe,  our  own  perhaps  ex- 
cepted, have  at  the  present  time  reached  so  high  a  point  of 
wealtu  and  civilization  as  some  parts  of  Italy  had  attained 


MACHIAVELLI.  67 

four  hundred  years  ago.  Historians  rarely  descend  to  those 
details  from  which  alone  the  real  state  of  the  community  can 
be  collected.  Hence,  posterity  is  too  often  deceived  by  the 
vague  hyperLolcs  of  poets  and  rhetoricians,  who  mistake 
the  splendour  of  a  court  for  the  happiness  of  a  people. 
Fortunately,  John  Villani  has  given  us  an  ample  and 
precise  account  of  the  state  of  Florence  in  the  earlier  part 
of  the  fourteenth  century.  The  revenue  of  the  republic 
amounted  to  three  hundred  thousand  florins,  a  sum  which, 
allowing  for  the  depreciation  of  the  precious  metals,  was  at 
least  equivalent  to  six  hundred  thousand  pounds  sterling; 
a  larger  sum  than  England  and  Ireland,  two  centuries  ago, 
yielded  annually  to  Elizabeth — a  larger  sum  than,  ac- 
cording to  any  computation  which  we  have  seen,  the 
Grand-duke  of  Tuscany  now  derives  from  a  territory  of 
much  greater  extent.  The  manufacture  of  wool  alone, 
employed  two  hundred  factories  and  thirty  thousand  work- 
men. The  cloth  annually  produced  sold,  at  an  average,  for 
twelve  hundred  thousand  florins;  a  sum  fairly  equal,  in  ex- 
changeable value,  to  two  millions  and  a  half  of  our  money. 
Four  hundred  thousand  florins  were  annually  coined. 
Eighty  banks  conducted  the  commercial  operations,  not  of 
Florence  only,  but  of  all  Europe.  The  transactions  of 
these  establishments  were  sometimes  of  a  magnitude  which 
may  surprise  even  the  contemporaries  of  the  Barings  and 
the  Rothschilds.  Two  houses  advanced  to  Edward  the 
Third  of  England  upwards  of  three  hundred  thousand 
marks,  at  a  time  when  the  mark  contained  more  silver  than 
fifty  shillings  of  the  present  day,  and  when  the  value  of 
silver  was  more  than  quadruple  of  what  it  now  is.  The 
city  and  its  environs  contained  a  hundred  and  seventy 
thousand  inhabitants.  In  the  various  schools  about  ten 
thousand  children  were  taught  to  read;  twelve  hundred 
studied  arithmetic ;  six  hundred  received  a  learned  education. 
The  progress  of  elegant  literature  and  of  the  fine  arts  was 
proportioned  to  that  of  the  public  prosperity.  .JJnder  the 
despotic  successors  of  Augustus,  all  the  fields  of  the  intel- 
lect had  been  turned  into  arid  wastes,  still  marked  out  by 
formal  boundaries,  still  retaining  the  traces  of  old  culti- 
vation, but  yielding  neither  flowers  nor  fruit.  The  deluge 
of  barbarism  came     It  swept  away  all  the  landmarks.    It 


68  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

obliterated  all  the  signs  of  former  tillage.  But  it  fertilized 
while  it  devastated.  When  it  receded,  the  wilderness  was 
as  the  garden  of  God,  rejoicing  on  every  side,  laughing, 
clapping  its  hands,  pouring  forth  in  spontaneous  abundance 
every  thing  brilliant,  or  fragrant,  or  nourishing.  A  new 
language,  characterized  by  simple  sweetness  and  simple 
energy,  had  attained  its  perfection.  No  tongue  ever  fur- 
nished more  gorgeous  and  vivid  tints  to  poetry ;  nor  was  it 
long  before  a  poet  appeared  who  knew  how  to  employ  them. 
Early  in  the  fourteenth  century  came  forth  the  Divine 
Comedy,  beyond  comparison  the  greatest  work  of  imagina- 
tion which  had  appeared  since  the  poems  of  Homer.  The 
following  generation  produced,  indeed,  no  second  Dante; 
but  it  was  eminently  distinguished  by  general  intellectual 
activity.  The  study  of  the  Latin  writers  had  never  been 
wholly  neglected  in  Italy.  But  Petrarch  introduced  a  more 
profound,  liberal,  and  elegant  scholarship;  and  communi- 
cated to  his  countrymen  that  enthusiasm  for  the  literature, 
the  history,  and  the  antiquities  of  Home,  which  divided  his 
own  heart  with  a  frigid  mistress  and  a  more  frigid  muse. 
Boccaccio  turned  their  attention  to  the  more  sublime  and 
graceful  models  of  Greece. 

From  this  time  the  admiration  of  learning  and  genius 
became  almost  an  idolatry  among  the  people  of  Italy.  Kings 
and  republics,  cardinals  and  doges,  vied  with  each  other  in 
honouring  and  flattering  Petrarch.  Embassies  from  rival 
states  solicited  the  honour  of  his  instructions.  His  coro- 
nation agitated  the  court  of  Naples  and  the  people  of  Rome 
as  much  as  the  most  important  political  transactions  could 
have  done.  To  collect  books  and  antiques,  to  found  pro- 
fessorships, to  patronise  men  of  learning,  became  almost 
universal  fashions  among  the  great.  The  spirit  of  literary 
research  allied  itself  to  that  of  commercial  enterprise. 
Every  place  to  which  the  merchant-princes  of  Florence 
extended  their  gigantic  traffic,  from  the  bazaars  of  the  Tigris 
to  the  monasteries  of  the  Clyde,  was  ransacked  for  medals 
and  manuscripts.  Architecture,  painting,  and  sculpture 
were  munificently  encouraged.  Indeed,  it  would  be  difficult 
to  name  an  Italian  of  eminence  during  the  period  of  which 
we  speak,  who,  whatever  may  have  been  his  general  cha- 
vacter,  did  not  at  least  affect  a  love  of  letters  and  of  the  arts. 


MACHIAVELLI.  69 

Knowledge  and  public  prosperity  continued  to  advance 
together.  Both  attained  their  meridian  in  the  a^o  of  Lorenzo 
the  Magnificent.  V^e  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  the  splen- 
did passage,  in  which  the  Tuscan  Thucydides  describes  the 
state  of  Italy  at  that  period : — "Ridotta  tutta  in  somma  pace 
e  tranquillita,  coltivata  non  meno  ne'  luoghi  piii  montuosi  e 
piu  sterili  che  nelle  piauure  e  regioni  piu  fertili,  ne  sotto- 
posta  ad  altro  imi)erio  che  de  'suoi  medesimi,  non  solo  era 
abbondantissima  d'abitatori  e  di  ricchezze;  ma  illustrata 
sommamente  dalla  magnificenza  di  molti  principi,  dallo 
splendore  di  molto  nobilissime  e  billissime  citta^  dalla  sedia 
e  macsta  delle  religione,  fioriva  d'uomini  prestantissimi  nelF 
amministrazione  delle  cose  pubbliche,  e  d'ingegni  molto  no- 
bili  in  tutte  le  scienze,  ed  in  qualunque  arte  preclara  ed  in- 
dustriosa.'^^^  When  we  peruse  this  just  and  sj^leudid  de- 
scription, we  can  scarcely  persuade  ourselves  that  we  are 
reading  of  times  in  which  the  annals  of  England  and  France 
present  us  only  with  a  frightful  prospect  of  poverty,  barbarity, 
and  ignorance.  From  the  oppressions  of  illiterate  masters, 
and  the  sufferings  of  a  brutalized  peasantry,  it  is  delightful 
to  turn  to  the  opulent  and  enlightened  states  of  Italy — to 
the  vast  and  magnificent  cities,  the  ports,  the  arsenals,  the 
villas,  the  museums,  the  libraries,  the  marts  filled  with  every 
article  of  comfort  and  luxury,  the  manufactories  swarming 
with  artisans,  the  Apennines  covered  with  rich  cultivation 
up  to  their  very  summits,  the  Po  wafting  the  harvests  of 
Lombardy  to  the  granaries  of  Venice,  and  carrying  back 
the  silks  of  Bengal  and  the  firs  of  Siberia  to  the  palaces  of 
Milan.  With  peculiar  pleasure,  every  cultivated  mind  must 
repose  on  the  fair,  the  happy,  the  glorious  Florence — on  the 
halfi  which  rung  with  the  mirth  of  Pulci — the  cell  where 
twinkled  the  midnight  lamp  of  Politian — the  statues  on 
which  the  young  eye  of  Miciiael  Angelo  glared  with  the 
frenzy  of  a  kindred  inspiration — the  gardens  in  which  Lo- 
renzo meditated  some  sparkling  song  for  the  May-day  dance 
of  the  Etrurian  Virgins.  Alas,  for  the  beautiful  city !  Alas, 
for  the  wit  and  the  learning,  the  genius  and  the  love ! 
''Le  donne,  e  cavalier,  gli  aiFanni,  gli  agi, 
Che  ne'nvogliav'  amove  e  cortesia, 
La  dove  i  cuor'  son  fatti  el  malvagi."-{- 

*  Gui  3ciardini,  lib,  i,  f  Dante  Purgatorio,  xiv. 


70  MAOAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   AVRITINGS. 

A  time  was  at  hand,  when  all  the  seven  vials  of  the 
Ar>ocalvnse  were  to  be  poured  forth  and  shaken  cut  over 
those  pleasant  countries — a  time  for  slaughter,  famine, 
beggary,  infamy,  slavery,  despair. 

In  the  Italian  States,  as  in  many  natural  bodies,  untimely 
decrepitude  was  the  penalty  of  precocious  maturity.  Their 
early  greatness,  and  their  early  decTTneJ  are  principally  to 
be  attributed  to  the  same  cause — the  preponderance  which 
the  towns  acquired  in  the  political  system. 

In  a  community  of  hunters  or  of  shepherds,  every  man 
easily  and  necessarily  bccomt^s'  a  soldier.  His  ordinary  avo- 
cations are  perfectly  compatible  with  all  the  duties  of  mili- 
tary service.  However  remote  may  be  the  expedition  on 
which  he  is  bound,  he  finds  it  easy  to  transport  with  him 
the  stock  from  which  he  derives  his  subsistence.  The 
whole  people  is  an  army ;  the  whole  year  a  march.  Such 
was  the  state  of  society  which  facilitated  the  gigantic  con- 
quests of  Attila  and  Timour. 

But  a  people  which  subsists  by  the  cultivation  of  the  earth 
is  in  a  very  different  situation.  The  husbandman  is  bound 
to  the  soil  on  which  he  labours.  A  long  campaign  would  be 
ruinous  to  him.  Still,  his  pursuits  are  such  as  give  to  his 
frame  both  the  active  and  the  passive  strength  necessary  to 
a  soldier.  Nor  do  they,  at  least  in  the  infancy  of  agricul- 
tural science,  demand  his  uninterrupted  attention.  At  par- 
ticular times  of  the  year  he  is  almost  wholly  unemployed, 
and  can,  without  injury  to  himself,  afford  the  time  neces- 
sary for  a  short  expedition.  Thus,  the  legions  of  Rome 
were  supplied  during  its  earlier  wars.  The  season,  during 
which  the  farms  did  not  require  the  presence  of  the  culti- 
vators, sufficed  for  a  short  inroad  and  a  battle.  These  ope- 
rations, too  frequently  interrupted  to  prod  nee  decisive  re- 
sults, yet  served  to  keep  up  among  the  people  a  degree  of 
discipline  and  courage  which  rendered  them,  not  only 
secure,  but  formidable.  The  archers  and  billmen  of  the 
middle  ages,  who,  with  provisions  for  forty  days  at  their 
backs,  left  the  fields  for  the  camp,  were  troops  of  the  same 
description. 

But,  when  commerce  and  manufactures  begin  to  flourish, 
a  great  change  takes  place.  The  sedentary  habits  of  the 
desk  and  the  loom  render  the  exertions  and  hardships  of 


MACniAVELLI.  71 

war  insupportable.  The  occupations  of  tradei-s  and  arti- 
sans require  their  constant  presence  and  attention.  In 
such  a  community,  there  is  little  superfluous  time ;  but 
there  is  generally  much  superfluous  money.  Some  mem- 
bers of  the  society  are,  therefore,  hired  to  relieve  the  rest 
from  a  task  inconsistent  with  their  habits  and  engagements. 

The  history  of  Greece  is,  in  this,  as  in  many  other  respects, 
the  best  commentary  on  the  history  of  Italy.  Five  hun- 
dred years  before  the  Christian  era,  the  citizens  of  the  repub- 
lics round  the  iEgean  Sea  formed  perhaps  the  finest  militia 
that  ever  existed.  As  wealth  and  refinement  advanced,  the 
system  underwent  a  gradual  alteration.  The  Ionian  States 
were  the  first  in  which  commerce  and  the  arts  were  culti- 
vated,— and  the  first  in  which  the  ancient  discipline  de- 
cayed. Within  eighty  years  after  the  battle  of  Plat^ea, 
mercenary  troops  were  everywhere  plying  for  battles  and 
sieges.  In  the  time  of  Demosthenes,  it  was  scarcely  pos- 
sible to  persuade  or  compel  the  Athenians  to  enlist  for 
foreign  service.  The  laws  of  Lycurgus  prohibited  trade 
and  manufactures.  The  Spartans,  therefore,  continued  to 
form  a  national  force,  long  after  their  neighbours  had  begun  to 
hire  soldiers.  But  their  military  spirit  declined  with  their 
singular  institutions.  In  the  second  century,  Greece  con- 
tained only  one  nation  of  warriors,  the  savage  highlanders 
of  ^Etolia,  who  were  at  least  ten  generations  behind  their 
countrymen  in  civilization  and  intelligence. 

All  the  causes  which  produced  these  efiects  among  the 
Greeks  acted  still  more  strongly  on  the  modern  Italians. 
Instead  of  a  power  like  Sparta,  in  its  nature  warlike,  they 
had  among  them  an  ecclesiastical  state,  in  its  nature  pacific. 
Where  there  are  numerous  slaves,  every  freeman  is  induced 
by  the  strongest  motives  to  familiarize  himself  with  the  use 
of  arms.  The  commonwealths  of  Italy  did  not,  like  those 
of  Greece,  swarm  with  thousands  of  these  household  ene- 
mies. Lastly,  the  mode  in  which  military  operations  were 
conducted,  during  the  prosperous  times  of  Italy,  was  pecu- 
liarly unfavourable  to  the  formation  of  an  efiicient  militia 
Men  covered  with  iron  from  head  to  foot,  armed  with  pon- 
derous lances,  and  mounted  on  horses  of  the  largest  breed, 
were  considered  as  composing  the  strength  of  an  army. 
The  infantry  was  regarded  as  comparatively  worthless,  and 


72  macaulay's  miscellaneous  ^vritings. 

was  neglected  till  it  became  really  so.  These  tactics  main- 
tained their  ground  for  centuries  in  most  parts  of  Europe. 
That  foot  soldiers  could  withstand  the  charge  of  heavy 
cavalry  was  thought  utterly  impossible,  till,  towards  the 
close  of  the  fifteenth  centur}',  the  rude  mountaineers  of 
Switzerland  dissolved  the  spell,  and  astounded  the  most 
experienced  generals,  by  receiving  the  dreaded  shock  on  an 
impenetrable  forest  of  pikes. 

The  use  of  the  Grecian  spear,  the  Roman  sword,  or  the 
modern  bayonet,  might  be  acquired  with  comparative  ease. 
But  nothing  short  of  the  daily  exercise  of  years  could  train 
the  man  at  arms  to  support  his  ponderous  panoply,  and 
manage  his  unwieldy  weapon.  Throughout  Europe,  this 
most  important  branch  of  war  became  a  separate  profession. 
Beyond  the  Alps,  indeed,  though  a  profession,  it  was  not 
generally  a  trade.  It  was  the  duty  and  the  amusement  of 
a  large  class  of  country  gentlemen.  It  was  the  service  by 
which  they  held  their  lands,  and  the  diversion  by  which,  in 
the  absence  of  mental  resources,  they  beguiled  their  leisure. 
But,  in  the  Northern  States  of  Italy,  as  we  have  already  re- 
marked, the  growing  power  of  the  cities,  where  it  had  not 
exterminated  this  order  of  men,  had  completely  changed 
their  habits.  Here,  therefore,  the  practice  of  employing 
mercenaries  became  univers^il,  at  a  time  when  it  was  almost 
unknown  in  other  countries 

When  war  becomes  the  trade  of  a  separate  class,  the 
least  dangerous  course  left  to  a  government  is  to  form  that 
class  into  a  standing  army  It  is  scarcely  possible  that  men 
can  pass  their  lives  in  the  service  of  a  single  state,  without 
feeling  some  interest  in  its  greatness.  Its  victories  are  their 
victories.  Its  defep-ts  are  their  defeats.  The  contract  loses 
something  of  its  mercantile  character.  The  services  of  the 
soldier  are  considered  as  the  effects  of  patriotic  zeal,  his  pay 
as  the  tribute  of  national  gratitude.  To  betray  the  powers 
which  employs  him,  to  be  even  remiss  in  its  service,  are  in 
his  eyes  the  most  atrocious  and  degrading  of  crimes. 

When  the  princes  and  commonwealths  of  Italy  began  to 
use  hired  troops,  their  wisest  course  would  have  been  to 
form  separate  military  establishments.  Unhappily  this  was 
not  done.  The  mercenary  warriors  of  the  Peninsula, 
instead  of  being  attached  to  the  service  of  different  powers, 


MACHIAVELLI.  73 

were  regarded  as  the  common  property  of  all.  The  con- 
nection between  the  state  and  its  defenders  was  reduced  to 
the  most  simple  and  naked  traffic.  The  adventurer  brought 
his  horse,  his  weapons,  his  strength,  and  his  experience  into 
the  market.  Whether  the  King  of  Naples  or  the  Duke  of 
Milan,  the  Pope  or  the  Signory  of  Florence,  struck  the  bar- 
gain was  to  him  a  matter  of  perfect  indifference.  He  was 
for  the  highest  wages  and  the  longest  term.  When  the 
campaign  for  which  he  had  contracted  was  finished,  there 
was  neither  law  nor  punctilio  to  prevent  hiru^from  instantly 
turning  his  arms  against  his  late  masters.  LThe  soldierjyas 
altogether  disjoined  from  the  citizen  and  from  the  subject. 

The  natural  consequences  followed.  Left  to  the  conduct 
of  men  who  neither  loved  those  whom  they  defended,  nor 
hated  those  whom  they  opposed — who  were  often  bound  by 
stronger  ties  to  the  army  against  which  they  fought  than 
the  state  which  they  served — who  lost  by  the  termination 
of  the  conflict,  and  gained  by  its  prolongation,  war  com- 
pletely changed  its  character.  Every  man  came  into  the 
field  of  battle  impressed  with  the  knowledge  that,  in  a  few 
days,  he  might  be  taking  the  pay  of  the  power  against 
which  he  was  then  employed,  and  fighting  by  the  side  of 
his  enemies  against  his  associates.  The  strongest  interest 
and  the  strongest  feelings  concurred  to  mitigate  the  liostility 
of  those  who  had  lately  been  brethren  in  arms,  and  who 
might  soon  be  brethren  in  arms  once  more.  Their  com- 
mon profession  was  a  bond  of  union  not  to  be  forgotten, 
even  when  they  were  engaged  in  the  service  of  contending 
parties.  Hence  it  was  that  operations,  languid  and  inde- 
cisive beyond  any  recorded  in  history,  marches  and  coun- 
termarches, pillaging  expeditions  and  blockades,  bloodless 
capitulations  and  equally  bloodless  combats,  make  up  the 
military  history  of  Italy  during  the  course  of  nearly  two 
centuries.  Mighty  armies  fight  from  sunrise  to  sunset.  A 
great  victory  is  won.  Thousands  of  prisoners  are  taken ; 
and  hardly  a  life  is  lost !  A  pitched  battle  seems  to  have 
been  really  less  dangerous  than  an  ordinary  civil  tumult. 

Courage  was  now  no  longer  necessary  even  to  the  mili- 
tary character.  Men  grew  old  in  camps,  and  acquired  the 
highest  renown  by  their  warlike  achievements,  without  being 
oQce  required  to  face  serious  danger.  The  political  cou- 
V  ol.  I.— 7 


74  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

sequences  are  too  well  known.  The  richest  and  most 
enlightened  part  of  the  world  was  left  undefended,  to  the 
assaults  of  every  barbarous  invader— r-to  the  brutality  of 
Switzerland,  the  insolence  of  France,  and  the  fierce  rapa- 
city of  ^Vrragon.;  The  moral  effects  which  followed  from 
this  state  of  things  were  still  more  remarkable. 

Among  the  rude  nations  which  lay  beyond  the  Alps, 
valour  was  absolutely  indispensable.  Without  it  none  could 
be  eminent ;  few  could  be  secure.  Cowardice  was,  there- 
fore, naturally  considered  as  the  foulest  reproach.  Among 
the  polished  Italians,  enriched  by  commerce,  governed  by 
law,  and  passionately  attached  to  literature,  every  thing  was 
done  by  superiority  of  intelligence.  Their  very  wars,  more 
pacific  than  the  peace  of  their  neighbours,  required  rather 
civil  than  military  qualifications.  Hence,  while  courage  was 
the  point  of  honour  in  other  countries,  ingenuity  became 
the  point  of  honour  in  Italy.     . 

From  these  principles  were  deduced,  by  processes  strictly 
analogous,  two  opposite  systems  of  fashionable  morality. 
Through  the  greater  part  of  Europe,  the  vices  which  peculiar- 
ly belong  to  timid  dispositions,  and  which  are  the  natural 
defence  of  weakness,  fraud,  and  hypocrisy,  have  always  been 
most  disreputable.  On  the  other  hand,  the  excesses  of 
haughty  and  daring  spirits  have  been  treated  with  indul- 
gence, and  even  with  respect.  The  Italians  regarded  with 
corresponding  lenity  those  crimes  which  require  self-com- 
mand, address,  quick  observation,  fertile  invention,  and  pro- 
found knowledge  of  human  nature. 

Such  a  prince  as  our  Henry  the  Fifth  would  have  been 
the  idol  of  the  North.  The  follies  of  his  youth,  the  selfish 
and  desolating  ambition  of  his  manhood,  the  Lollards  roasted 
at  slow  fires,  the  prisoners  massacred  on  the  field  of  battle, 
the  expiring  lease  of  priestcraft  renewed  for  another  cen- 
tury, the  dreadful  legacy  of  a  causeless  and  hopeless  war,  be- 
queathed to  a  people  who  had  no  interest  in  its  event,  every 
thing  is  forgotten,  but  the  victory  of  Agincourt !  Francis 
Sforza,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  model  of  the  Italian  hero. 
He  made  his  employers  and  his  rivals  alike  his  tools.  He 
first  overpowered  his  open  enemies  by  the  help  of  faithless 
allies;  he  then  armed  himself  against  his  allies  with  the 
spoils  taken  from  his  enemies.     By  his  incomparable  dex' 


MACIIIAVELLT.  75 


terity,  lie  raised  himself  from  the  precarious  and  dependent 
eituation  of  a  military  adventurer  to  the  first  throne  of  Italy. 
To  such  a  man  much  was  forgiveji — hollow  friendship, 
ungenerous  enmity,  violated  faith,  r^uch  arc  the  opposite 
errors  which  men  commit,  when  t!ieir  morality  is  not  a 
science  but  a  taste ;  when  they  abandon  eternal  principles 
for  accidental  associationsT^ 

We  have  illustrated  our  meaning  by  an  instance  taken 
from  history.  We  will  select  another  from  fiction.  Othello 
murders  his  wife ;  he  gives  orders  for  the  murder  of  his 
lieutenant ;  he  ends  by  murdering  himself.  Yet  he  never 
loses  the  esteem  and  aifection  of  a  Northern  reader — his 
intrepid  and  ardent  spirit  redeeming  every  thing.  The  un- 
suspecting confidence  with  which  he  listens  to  his  adviser, 
the  agony  with  which  he  shrinks  from  the  thought  of  shame, 
the  tempest  of  passion  with  which  he  commits  his  crimes, 
and  the  haughty  fearlessness  with  which  he  avows  them, 
give  an  extraordinary  interest  to  his  character.  lago,  on 
the  contrary,  is  the  object  of  universal  loathing.  Many  are 
inclined  to  suspect  that' Shakspeare  has  been  seduced  into 
an  exaggeration  unusual  with  him,  and  has  drawn  a  monster 
who  has  no  archetype  in  human  nature.  Now  we  suspect, 
that  an  Italian  audience,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  would 
have  felt  very  difierently.  Othello  would  have  inspired 
nothing  but  detestation  and  contempt.  The  folly  with 
which  he  trusts  to  the  friendly  professions  of  a  man  whose 
promotion  he  had  obstructed — the  credulity  with  which  he 
takes  unsupported  assertions,  and  trivial  circumstances,  for 
unanswerable  proofs — the  violence  with  which  he  silences 
the  exculpation  till  the  exculpation  can  only  aggravate  his 
misery,  woui^i  have  excited  "the  abhorrence  and  disgust  of 
the  spectators.  The  conduct  of  lago  they  would  assuredly 
have  condemned ;  but  they  would  have  condemned  it  as  we 
condemn  that  of  his  victim.  Something  of  interest  and 
respect  would  have  mingled  with  their  disapprobation.  The 
readiness  of  his  wit,  the  clearness  of  his  judgment,  the  skill 
with  which  he  penetrates  the  dispositions  of  others  and  con- 
ceals his  own,  would  have  insured  to  him  a  certain  portion 
of  their  esteem. 

So  wide  was  the  difference  between  the  Italians  and  their 
neighbours.    A  similar  difi'erence  existed  between  the  G  reeks 


76  macaulay's  miscellaneous  avritings. 

of  the  second  century  before  Christ,  and  their  masters  the 
Romans.  The  conquerors,  brave  and  resolute,  faithful  to 
their  engagements,  and  strongly  influenced  by  religious 
feelings,  were,  at  the  same  time,  ignorant,  arbitrary,  and 
cruel.  With  the  vanquished  people  were  deposited  all  the 
art,  the  science,  and  the  literature  of  the  Western  world.  In 
poetry,  in  philosophy,  in  painting,  in  architecture,  in  sculp- 
ture, they  had  no  rivals.  Their  manners  were  polished, 
their  perceptions  acute,  their  invention  ready ;  they  were 
tolerant,  aftable,  humane.  But  of  courage  and  sincerity 
they  were  almost  utterly  destitute.  The  rude  warriors  who 
had  subdued  them  consoled  themselves  for  their  intellectual 
inferiority,  by  remarking  that  knowledge  and  taste  seemed 
only  to  make  men  atheists,  cowards,  and  slaves.  The 
distinction  long  continued  to  be  strongly  marked,  and 
furnished  an  admirable  subject  for  the  fierce  sarcasm  of 
,Iui£jial, 

The  citizen  of  an  Italian  commonwealth  was  the  Greek 
of  the  time  of  Juvenal,  and  the  Greek  of  the  time  of  Peri- 
cles, joined  in  one.  Like  the  former,  he  was  timid  and 
pliable,  artful  and  unscrupulous.  But,  like  the  latter,  he 
had  a  country.  Its  independence  and  prosperity  were  dear 
to  him.  If  his  character  were  degraded  by  some  mean 
crimes,  it  was,  on  the  other  hand,  ennobled  by  public  spirit 
and  by  an  honourable  ambition. 

A  vice  sanctioned  by  the  general  opinion  is  morcly  a  vice. 
The  evil  terminates  in  itself.  A  vice  condemned  by  the 
general  opinion  produces  a  pernicious  effect  on  the  whole 
character.  The  former  is  a  local  malady,  the  latter  a  con- 
stitutional taint.  When  the  reputation  of  the  offender  is 
lost,  he  too  often  flings  the  remains  of  his  virtue  after  it  in 
despair.  The  Highland  gentleman,  who,  a  century  ago, 
lived  by  taking  black  mail  from  his  neighbours,  committed 
the  same  crime  for  which  Wild  was  accompanied  to  Tyburn 
by  the  huzzas  of  two  hundred  thousand  people.  But  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  he  was  a  much  less  depraved  man  than 
Wild.  The  deed  for  which  Mrs.  Brownrigg  was  hanged 
sinks  into  nothing,  when  compared  with  the  conduct  of  the 
Boman  who  treated  the  public  to  a  hundred  pair  of  gladia- 
tors. Yet  we  should  probably  w'ong  such  a  Roman  if  we 
Bupposed  that  his  disposition  was  ^o  cruel  as  that  of  Mrs. 


MACHIAVELLI.  77 

Brownrigg.  In  our  own  country,  a  woman  forfeits  her  place 
in  society,  by  what,  in  a  man,  is  too  commonly  considered  as 
an  honouralDle  distinction,  and,  at  worst,  as  a  venial  error. 
The  consequence  is  notorious.  The  moral  principle  of  a 
woman  is  frequently  more  impaired  by  a  single  lapse  from 
virtue,  than  that  of  a  man  by  twenty  years  of  intrigue. 
Classical  antiquity  would  furnish  us  with  instances  stronger, 
if  possible,  than  those  to  which  we  have  referred. 

We  must  apply  this  principle  to  the  case  before  us. 
Habits  of  dissimulation  and  falsehood,  no  doubt,  mark  a 
man  of  our  age  and  country  as  utterly  worthless  and  aban- 
doned. But  it  by  no  means  follows  that  a  similar  judg- 
ment would  be  just  in  the  case  of  an  Italian  of  the  middle 
ages.  On  the  contrary,  we  frequently  find  those  faults, 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  consider  as  certain  indications 
of  a  mind  altogether  depraved,  in  company  with  great  and 
good  qualities,  with  generosity,  with  benevolence,  with 
disinterestedness.  From  such  a  state  of  society,  Palamedes, 
in  the  admirable  dialogue  of  Hume,  might  have  drawn  illus- 
trations of  his  theory  as  striking  as  any  of  those  with  which 
Fourli  furnished  him.  These  are  not,  we  well  know,  the 
lessons  which  historians  are  generally  most  careful  to  teach, 
or  readers  most  willing  to  learn.  But  they  are  not,  there- 
fore, useless.  How  Philip  disposed  his  troops  at  Cha3ronea, 
where  Hannibal  crossed  the  Alps,  whether  3Iary  blew  up 
Darnley,  or  Siquier  shot  Charles  the  Twelfth,  and  ten 
thousand  other  questions  of  the  same  description,  are  in 
themselves  unimportant.  The  inquiry  may  amuse  us,  but 
the  decision  leaves  us  no  wiser.  He  alone  reads  history 
aright,  who,  observing  how  powerfully  circumstances  in- 
fluence the  feelings  and  opinions  of  men,  how  often  vices 
pass  into  virtues,  and  paradoxes  into  axioms,  learns  to  dis- 
tinguish what  is  accidental  and  transitory  in  human  nature, 
from  what  is  essential  and  immutable. 

In  this  respect  no  history-  suggests  more  important  reflec- 
tions than  that  of  the  Tuscan  and  Lombard  common- 
wealths. The  character  of  the  Italian  statesman  seems,  at 
first  sight,  a  collection  of  contradictions,  a  phantom,  as  mon- 
strous as  the  portress  of  hell  in  31ilton,  half  divinity,  half 
snake,  majestic  and  beautiful  above,  grovelling  and  poi- 
sonous below.     We  see  a  man,  whose  thoughts  and  words 

7* 


78  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

have  no  connection  with  each  other ;  who  never  hesitates 
at  an  oath  when  he  wishes  to  seduce,  who  never  wants  a 
pretext  when  he  is  inclined  to  betray.  His  cruelties  spring, 
not  from  the  heat  of  blood,  or  the  insanity  of  uncontrolled 
power,  but  from  deep  and  cool  meditation.  His  passions, 
like  well-trained  troops,  are  impetuous  by  rule,  and  in  their 
most  headstrong  fury  never  forget  the  discipline  to  which 
they  have  been  accustomed.  His  whole  soul  is  occupied 
with  vast  and  complicated  schemes  of  ambition.  Yet  his 
aspect  and  language  exhibit  nothing  but  philgsophic  mode- 
ration. Hatred  and  revenge  cat  into  his  heart ;  yet  every 
look  is  a  cordial  smile,  every  gesture  a  fa.uiliar  caress.  He 
never  excites  the  suspicion  of  his  adversary  by  petty  pro- 
vocations. His  purpose  is  disclosed  only  when  it  is  ac- 
complished. His  face  is  unruffled,  his  speech  is  courteous, 
till  vigilance  is  laid  asleep,  till  a  vital  point  is  exposed,  till 
a  sure  aim  is  taken ;  and  then  he  strikes — for  the  first  and 
last  time.  Military  courage,  the  boast  of  the  sottish  Ger- 
man, the  frivolous  and  prating  Frenchman,  the  romantic 
and  arrogant  Spaniard,  he  neither  possesses  nor  values. 
He  shuns  danger,  not  because  he  is  insensible  to  shame, 
but  because,  in  the  society  in  which  he  lives,  timidity  has 
ceased  to  be  shameful.  To  do  an  injury  openly  is,  in  his 
estimation,  as  wicked  as  to  do  it  secretly,  and  far  less  pro- 
fitable. With  him  the  most  honourable  means  are — the 
surest,  the  speediest,  and  the  darkest.  He  cannot  compre- 
hend how  a  man  should  scruple  to  deceive  him  whom  he 
does  not  scruple  to  destroy.  He  would  think  it  madness 
to  declare  ojDcn  hostilities  against  a  rival  whom  he  might 
stab  in  a  friendly  embrace,  or  poison  in  a  consecrated  wafer. 
Yet  this  man,  black  with  the  vices  which  ice  consider  as 
most  loathsome — traitor,  hypocrite,  coward,  assassin — was 
by  no  means  destitute  even  of  those  virtues  which  we  gene- 
rally consider  as  indicating  superior  elevation  of  character. 
In  civil  courage,  in  perseverance,  in  presence  of  mind,  those 
barbarous  warriors  who  were  foremost  in  the  battle  or  the 
breach,  were  far  his  inferiors.  Even  the  dangers  which  he 
avoided,  with  a  caution  almost  pusillanimous,  never  confused 
his  perceptions,  never  paralysed  his  inventive  faculties,  never 
wruEg  out  one  secret  from  his  ready  tongue  and  his  inscrut- 
able brow.     Though  a  dangerous  enemy,  and  a  still  n;»or8 


MACHIAVELLI.  79 

dangerous  accomplice,  he  was  a  just  and  beneficent  ruler. 
With  so  much  unfairness  in  his  policy,  there  was  an  extra- 
ordinary degree  of  fairness  in  his  intellect.  Indifferent  to 
truth  in  the  transactions  of  life,  he  was  honestly  devoted  to 
the  pursuit  of  truth  in  the  researches  of  speculation.  Wan- 
ton cruelty  was  not  in  his  nature.  On  the  contrary,  where 
no  political  object  was  at  stake,  his  disposition  was  soft  and 
humane.  The  susceptibility  of  his  nerves,  and  the  activity 
of  his  imagination,  inclined  him  to  sympathize  with  the 
feelings  of  others,  and  to  delight  in  the  charities  and  courte- 
sies of  social  life.  Perpetually  descending  to  actions  which 
might  seem  to  mark  a  mind  diseased  through  all  its  facul- 
ties, he  had  nevertheless  an  exquisite  sensibility  both  for 
the  natural  and  the  moral  sublime,  for  every  graceful  and 
every  lofty  conception.  Habits  of  petty  intrigue  and  dis- 
simulation might  have  rendered  him  incapable  of  great 
general  views,  but  that  the  expanding  effect  of  his  philo- 
sophical studies  counteracted  the  narrowing  tendency.  He 
had  the  keenest  enjoyment  of  wit,  eloquence,  and  poetry. 
The  fine  arts  i^rofited  alike  by  the  severity  of  his  judgment, 
and  the  liberality  of  his  patronage.  The  portraits  of  some 
of  the  remarkable  Italians  of  those  times  are  perfectly  in 
harmony  with  this  description.  Amj)le  and  majestic  fore- 
heads ;  brows  strong  and  dark,  but  not  frowning ;  eyes  of 
which  the  caln>  full  gaze,  while  it  expresses  nothing,  seems 
to  discern  every  thing  ;  cheeks  pale  with  thought  and  seden- 
tary habits ;  lips  formed  with  feminine  delica<3y,  but  com- 
pressed with  more  than  masculine  decision,  mark  out  men 
at  once  enterprising  and  apprehensive ;  men  equally  skilled 
in  detecting  the  purpose  of  others,  and  in  concealing  their 
own;  men  who  must  have  been  formidable  enemies  and 
unsafe  allies ;  but  men,  at  the  same  time,  whose  tempers 
were  mild  and  equable,  and  who  possesssed  an  amplitude 
and  subtlety  of  mind,  which  would  have  rendered  them 
eminent  either  in  active  or  in  contemplative  life,  and  fitted 
them  either  to  govern  or  to  instruct  mankind. 

Every  age  and  every  nation  has  certain  characteristic 
vices,  which  prevail  almost  universally,  which  scarcely  any 
person  scruples  to  avow,  and  which  even  rigid  moralists  but 
faintly  censure.  Succeeding  generations  change  the  fashion 
of  their  morals,  with  their  hats  and  their  coaches;  take 


80  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS    WRITINGS. 

some  other  kind  of  wickedness  under  their  patronage,  and 
wonder  at  the  depravity  of  their  ancestors.  Nor  is  this 
all.  Posterity,  that  high  court  of  appeal  which  is  never 
tired  of  eulogizing  its  own  judgment  and  discernment,  acts, 
on  such  occasions,  like  a  Roman  dictator  after  a  general 
mutiny.  Finding  the  delinquents  too  numerous  to  be  all 
punished,  it  selects  some  of  them  at  hazard,  to  bear  the 
whole  penalty  of  an  oftence  in  which  they  are  not  more 
deeply  implicated  than  those  who  escape.  Whether  deci- 
mation be  a  convenient  mode  of  military  execution,  we  know 
not ;  but  we  solemnly  protest  against  the  introduction  of 
such  a  principle  into  the  philosophy  of  history. 

In  the  present  instance,  the  lot  has  fallen  on  Machiavelli : 
a  man  whose  public  conduct  was  upright  and  honourable, 
whose  views  of  morality,  where  they  differed  from  those  of 
the  persons  around  him,  seem  to  have  diiFcred  for  the  better, 
and  whose  only  fault  was,  that,  having  adopted  some  of 
the  maxims  then  generally  received,  he  arranged  them  more 
luminously,  and  expressed  them  more  forcibly,  than  any 
other  writer. 

Having  now,  we  hope,  in  some  degree  cleared  the  per- 
sonal character  of  Machiavelli,  we  come  to  the  consideration 
of  his  works.  As  a  poet,  he  is  not  entitled  to  a  very  high 
place.  The  Decennali  are  merely  abstracts  of  the  history 
of  his  own  times  in  rhyme.  The  style  and  versification  are 
seduously  modelled  on  those  of  Dante.  But  the  manner  of 
Dante,  like  that  of  every  other  great  original  poet,  was 
suited  only  to  his  own  genius,  and  to  his  own  subject.  The 
distorted  and  rugged  diction  which  gives  to  his  unearthly 
imagery  a  yet  more  unearthly  character,  and  seems  to  proceed 
from  a  man  labouring  to  express  that  which  is  inexpressible, 
is  at  once  mean  and  extravagant  when  misemployed  by  an 
imitator.  The  moral  poems  are  in  every  point  superior. 
That  on  Fortune,  in  particular,  and  that  on  Opportunity,  ex- 
hibit both  justness  of  thought  and  fertility  of  fancy.  The 
Golden  Ass  has  nothing  but  the  name  in  common  with  the 
Romance  of  Apuleius,  a  book  which,  in  spite  of  its  irregu- 
lar plan  and  its  detestable  style,  is  among  the  most  fascinat- 
ing in  the  Latin  language,  and  in  which  the  merits  of  Le 
Sage  and  Radcliffe,  Bunyan  and  Crebillon,  are  singularly 
united.     The  poem  of  Machiavelli,  which  is  evidently  un- 


MACHIAVELLI.  81 

finished,  is  carefully  copied  from  the  earlier  cantos  of  the 
Inferno.  The  writer  loses  himself  in  a  wood.  He  is  terri- 
fied by  monsters,  and  relieved  by  a  beautiful  damsel.  His 
protectress  conducts  him  to  a  large  menagerie  of  emblema- 
tical beasts,  whose  peculiarities  are  described  at  length. 
The  manner  as  well  as  the  plan  of  the  Divine  Comedy  is 
carefully  imitated.  Whole  lines  are  transferred  from  it. 
But  they  no  longer  produce  their  wonted  effect.  Virgil  ad- 
vises the  husbandman  who  removes  a  plant  from  one  spot 
to  another  to  mark  its  bearings  on  the  cork,  and  to  place  it 
in  the  same  position  with  regard  to  the  different  points  of 
the  heaven  in  which  it  formerly  stood.  A  similar  care  is 
necessary  in  poetical  transplantation.  Where  it  is  neglected, 
we  perpetually  see  the  flowers  of  language,  which  have 
bloomed  on  one  soil,  wither  on  another.  Yet  the  Golden 
Ass  is  not  altogether  destitute  of  merit.  There  is  con- 
siderable ingenuity  in  the  allegory,  and  some  vivid  colour- 
ing in  the  descriptions. 

The  comedies  deserve  more  attention.  The  Mandragola, 
in  particular,  is  superior  to  the  best  of  Goldoni,  and  inferior 
only  to  the  best  of  Moliere.  It  is  the  work  of  a  man  who, 
if  he  had  devoted  himself  to  the  drama,  would  probably  have 
attained  the  highest  eminence,  and  produced  a  permanent 
'and  salutary  effect  on  the  national  taste.  This  we  infer, 
not  so  much  from  the  degree,  as  from  the  kind  of  its  excel- 
lence. There  are  compositions  which  indicate  still  greater 
talent,  and  which  arf  perused  with  still  greater  delight,  from 
which  we  should  have  drawn  very  different  conclusions. 
Books  quite  worthless  are  quite  harmless.  The  sure  sign  / 
of  the  general  decline  of  an  art  is  the  frequent  occurrence, ' 
not  of  deformity,  but  of  misplaced  beauty.  In  general, 
tragedy  is  corrupted  by  eloquence,  and  comedy  by  wit. 

The  real  object  of  the  drama  is  the  exhibition  of  the  hu- 
man character.  This,  we  conceive,  is  no  arbitrary  canon, 
originating  in  local  and  temporary  associations,  like  those 
which  regulate  the  number  of  acts  in  a  play,  or  syllables  in 
a  line.  It  is  the  very  essence  of  a  species  of  composition, 
in  which  every  idea  is  coloured  by  passing  through  the  me- 
dium of  an  imagined  mind.  To  this  fundamental  law  every 
other  regulation  is  subordinate.     The  situations  which  most 


82  MACAULAY's    MISCELLANEOUS    -WRITINGS. 

signally  develope  character  form  the  best  plot.  The  niothe* 
tongue  of  the  passions  is  the  best  style. 

The  principle,  rightly  imclerstood,  does  not  debar  the 
poet  from  any  grace  of  composition.  There  is  no  style  in 
which  some  man  may  not,  under  some  circumstances,  ex- 
press himself.  There  is  therefore  no  style  which  the  drama 
rejects,  none  which  it  does  not  occasionally  require.  It  is 
in  the  discernment  of  place,  of  time,  and  of  person,  that  the 
inferior  artists  fliil.  The  brilliant  rodomontade  of  Mercutio, 
the  elaborate  declamation  of  Antony,  are,  where  Shak- 
speare  has  placed  them,  natural  and  pleasing.  But  Dry  den 
would  have  made  Mercutio  challenge  Tybalt,  in  hyperboles 
as  fanciful  as  those  in  which  he  describes  the  chariot  of 
Mab. — Corneille  would  have  represented  Antony  as  scolding 
and  coaxing  Cleopatra  with  all  the  measured  rhetoric  of  a 
funeral  oration. 

No  writers  have  injured  the  Comedy  of  England  so  deeply 
as  Congreve  and  Sheridan.  Both  were  men  of  splendid  wit 
and  polished  taste.  Unhappily  they  made  all  their  charac- 
ters in  their  own  likeness.  Their  works  bear  the  same  re- 
lation to  the  legitimate  drama  which  a  transparency  bears 
to  a  painting;  no  delicate  touches;  no  hues  imperceptibly 
fading  into  each  other;  the  whole  is  lighted  up  with  an  uni- 
versal glare.  Outlines  and  tints  are  forgotten,  in  the  com- 
mon blaze  which  illuminates  all.  The  flowers  and  fruits  of 
the  intellect  abound;  but  it  is  the  abundance  of  a  jungle,  not 
of  a  garden — unwholesome,  bewildering,  unprofitable  from 
its  very  plenty,  rank  from  its  very  fragrance.  Every  fop, 
every  boor,  every  valet  is  a  man  of  wit.  The  very  butts  and 
dupes.  Tattle,  Urkwould,  PuflP,  Acres,  outshine  the  whole 
Hotel  de  Rambouillet.  To  prove  the  whole  system  of  this 
school  absurd,  it  is  only  necessary  to  apply  the  test  which 
dissolved  the  enchanted  Florimel — to  place  the  true  by  the 
false  Thalia,  to  contrast  the  most  celebrated  characters 
which  have  been  drawn  by  the  writers  of  whom  we  speak, 
with  the  Bastard  in  King  John,  or  the  Nurse  in  Komeo  and 
Juliet.  It  was  not  surely  from  want  of  wit  that  Shakspeare 
adopted  so  different  a  manner.  Benedick  and  Beatrice 
throw  Mirabel  and  Millamant  into  the  shade.  All  the  good 
sayings  of  the  facetious  hours  of  Absolute  and  Surface  might 
have  been  clipped  from  the  single  character  of  Falstaff  with- 


MACHIAVELLI.  83 

out  being  missed.  It  would  have  been  easy  for  that  fertile 
mind  to  have  given  Bardolph  and  Shallow  as  much  wit  as 
Prince  Hal,  and  to  have  made  Dogberry  and  Verges  retort 
on  each  other  in  sparkling  epigrams.  But  he  knew,  to  use 
his  own  admirable  language,  that  such  indiscriminate  prodi- 
gality was  ^'■fvom  the  purpose  of  playing,  whose  end,  both 
at  the  first  and  now,  was,  and  is,  to  hold,  as  it  were,  the 
mirror  up  to  Nature.'' 

This  digression  will  enable  our  readers  to  understand 
what  we  mean  when  we  say  that,  in  the  3Iandragola,  Ma- 
chiavelli  has  proved  that  he  completely  understood  the  nature 
of  the  dramatic  art,  and  possessed  talents  which  would  have 
enabled  him  to  excel  in  it.  By  the  correct  and  vigorous 
delineation  of  human  nature,  it  produces  interest  without  a 
pleasing  or  skilful  plot,  and  laughter  without  the  least  am- 
bition of 'wit.  The  lover,  not  a  very  delicate  or  generous 
lover,  and  his  adviser  the  parasite,  are  drawn  with  spirit. 
The  hypocritical  confessor  is  an  admirable  portrait.  He  is, 
if  we  mistake  not,  the  original  of  Father  Dominic,  the  best 
comic  character  of  Dry  den.  But  old  Nicias  is  the  glory  of 
the  piece.  We  cannot  call  to  mind  any  thing  that  resembles 
him.  The  follies  which  Moliere  ridicules  are  those  of  affec- 
tation, not  those  of  fiituity.  Coxcombs  and  pedants,  not 
simpletons,  are  his  game.  Shakspeare  has  indeed  a  vast 
assortment  of  fools;  but  the  precise  species  of  which  we 
speak  is  not,  if  we  remember  right,  to  be  found  there. 
Shallow  is  a  fool.  But  his  animal  spirits  supply,  to  a  cer- 
tain degree,  the  place  of  cleverness.  His  talk  is  to  that  of 
Sir  John  what  soda-water  is  to  champagne.  It  has  the  effer- 
vescence, though  not  the  body  or  the  flavour.  Slender  and 
Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek  are  fools,  troubled  with  an  uneasy 
consciousness  of  their  folly,  which,  in  the  latter,  produces  a 
^nost  edifying  meekness  and  docility,  and  in  the  former, 
awkwardness,  obstinacy,  and  confusion.  Cloten  is  an  arro- 
gant fool,  Osric  a  foppish  fool,  Ajax  a  savage  fool;  but 
Nicias  is,  as  Thersites  says  of  Patroclus,  a  fool  positive. 
His  mind  is  occupied  by  no  strong  feeling;  it  takes  every 
character,  and  retains  none ;  its  aspect  is  diversified,  not  by 
passions,  but  by  faint  and  transitory  semblances  of  passion, 
a  mock  joy,  a  mock  fear,  a  mock  love,  a  mock  pride,  which 
chase  each  other  like  shadows  over  its  surface,  and  vanish 


84  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

as  soon  as  they  appear.  He  is  just  idiot  enough  to  be  an 
object,  not  of  pity  or  horror,  but  of  ridicule.  He  bears 
some  resemblance  to  poor  Calandrino,  whose  mishaps,  a3 
recounted  by  Boccaccio,  have  made  all  Europe  merry  for 
more  than  four  centuries.  He  perhaps  resembles  still  more 
closely  Simon  de  Villa,  to  whom  Bruno  and  Buffulmacco 
promised  the  love  of  the  Countess  Civillari.'''  Nicias  is,  like 
Simon,  of  a  learned  profession ;  and  the  dignity  with  which 
he  wears  the  doctoral  fur  renders  his  absurdities  infinitely 
more  grotesque.  The  old  Tuscan  is  the  very  language  for 
such  a  being.  Its  peculiar  simplicity  gives  even  to  the  mosfc 
forcible  reasoning  and  the  most  brilliant  wit  an  infantine 
air,  generally  delightful,  but  to  a  foreign  reader  sometimes 
a  little  ludicrous.  Heroes  and  statesmen  seem  to  lisp  when 
they  use  it.  It  becomes  Nicias  incomparably,  and  renders 
all  his  silliness  infinitely  more  silly. 

We  may  add,  that  the  verses,  with  which  the  IMandra- 
gola  is  interspersed,  appear  to  us  to  be  the  most  spirited  and 
correct  of  all  that  Machiavelli  has  written  in  metre.  He 
seems  to  have  entertained  the  same  opinim;  for  he  has  in- 
troduced some  of  them  in  other  places.  The  contemporaries 
of  the  author  were  not  blind  to  the  merits  of  this  striking 
piece.  It  was  acted  in  Florence  with  the  greatest  success, 
Leo  the  Tenth  was  among  its  admirers,  and  by  his  order  it 
was  represented  at  Rome.t 

The  Clizia  is  an  imitation  of  the  Casina  of  Plautus,  which 
is  itself  an  imitation  of  the  lost  Kxri^ovjxsiot,  of  Diphilus. 
Plautus  was,  unquestionably,  one  of  the  best  Latin  writers. 
His  works  are  copies;  bu'  they  have  in  an  extraordinary 
degree  the  air  of  originals.  We  infinitely  prefer  the  slovenly 
exuberance  of  his  fimcy,  and  the  clumsy  vigour  of  his  dic- 
tion, to  the  artfully  disguised  poverty  and  elegant  languor 
of  Terence.  But  the  Casina  is  by  no  means  one  of  his  besf 
plays;  nor  is  it  one  which  ofiers  great  facilities  to  an  iniita- 


*  Decameron,  Giorn.  yiii.     Nov.  9. 

f  Nothing  can  be  more  evident  than  that  Paulns  Jovius  desig- 
nates the  Mandragola  vinder  the  name  of  the  Nicias.  We  should 
not  have  noticed  what  is  so  perfectly  obvious,  were  it  not  that  thia 
natural  and  palpable  misnomer  has  led  the  sagacious  and  indus- 
trious Bayle  into  a  gross  error. 


MACHIAVELLI.  85 

tor.  The  story  is  as  alien  from  modern  habits  of  life,  as 
the  manner  in  which  it  is  developed  from  the  modern  fashion 
of  composition.  The  lover  remains  in  the  country,  and  the 
heroine  is  locked  up  in  her  chamber  during  the  whole 
action,  leaving  their  fate  to  be  decided  by  a  foolish  father, 
a  cunning  mother,  and  two  knavish  servants.  Machiavelli 
has  executed  his  task  with  judgment  and  taste.  He  has 
accommodated  the  plot  to  a  different  state  of  society,  and 
has  very  dexterously  connected  it  with  the  history  of  his 
own  times.  The  relation  of  the  trick  put  on  the  doating 
old  lover  is  exquisitely  humorous.  It  is  far  superior  to  the 
corresponding  passage  in  the  Latin  comedy,  and  scarcely 
yields  to  the  account  which  Falstaff  gives  of  his  ducking. 

Two  other  comedies,  without  titles,  the  one  in  prose,  the 
other  in  verse,  appear  among  the  works  of  Machiavelli. 
The  former  is  very  short,  lively  enough,  but  of  no  great  value. 
The  latter  we  can  scarcely  believe  to  be  genuine.  Neither 
its  merits  nor  its  defects  remind  us  of  the  reputed  author. 
It  was  ffi'st  printed  in  1796,  from  a  manuscript  discovered 
in  the  celebrated  library  of  the  Strozzi.  Its  genuineness, 
if  we  have  been  rightly  informed,  is  established  solely  by 
the  comparison  of  hands.  Our  suspicions  are  strengthened 
by  the  circumstance,  that  the  same  manuscript  contained  a 
descrij^tion  of  the  plague  of  1527,  which  has  also,  in  con- 
sequence, been  added  to  the  works  of  3Iachiavelli.  Of 
this  last  composition  the  strongest  external  evidence  would 
scarcel}^  induce  us  to  believe  him  guilty.  Nothing  was 
ever  written  more  detestable,  in  matter  and  manner.  The 
narrations,  the  reflections,  the  jokes,  the  lamentations,  are 
all  the  very  worst  of  their  respective  kinds,  at  once  trite 
and  affected — threadbare  tinsel  from  the  Eagfairs  and  Mon- 
mouth-streets  of  literature.  A  foolish  school-boy  might 
perhaps  write  it,  and,  after  he  had  written  it,  think  it  much 
finer  than  the  incomparable  introduction  of  the  Decameron. 
But  that  a  shrewd  statesman,  whose  earliest  works  are 
characterized  by  manliness  of  thought  and  language,  should, 
at  nearly  sixty  years  of  age,  descend  to  such  puerility,  is 
utterly  inconceivable. 

The  little  Novel  of  Belphegor  is  pleasantly  conceived 
and  pleasantly  told.  But  the  extravagance  of  the  satire 
in  some  measure  injures  its  effect.      Machiavelli  was  un- 

VoL.  L— S 


86  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

happily  married;  and  his  wish  to  avenge  his  own  causa 
and  that  of  his  brethren  in  misfortune,  carried  him  beyond 
even  the  license  of  fiction.  Jonson  seems  to  have  combined 
some  hints  taken  from  this  tale  with  others  from  Boccaccio, 
in  the  plot  of  The  Devil  is  an  Ass — a  play  which,  though 
not  the  most  highly  finished  of  his  compositions,  is  perhaps 
that  which  exhibits  the  strongest  proofs  of  genius. 

The  political  correspondence  of  Machiavelli,  first  pub- 
lished in  1767,  is  unquestionably  genuine  and  highly  valu- 
able. The  unhappy  circumstances  in  which  his  country  was 
placed,  during  the  greater  part  of  his  public  life,  gave  ex- 
traordinary encouragement  to  diplomatic  talents.  From 
the  moment  that  Charles  the  Eighth  descended  from  the 
Alps,  the  whole  character  of  Italian  politics  was  changed. 
The  governments  of  the  Peninsula  cease  to  form  an  inde- 
pendent system.  Drawn  from  their  old  orbit  by  the  at- 
traction of  the  larger  bodies  which  now  approached  them, 
they  became  mere  satellites  of  France  and  Spain.  All  their 
disputes,  internal  and  external,  were  decided  by  foreign  in- 
fluence. The  contests  of  opposite  factions  were  carried  on, 
not  as  formerly  in  the  senate-house  or  in  the  market-place, 
but  in  the  antechambers  of  Louis  and  Ferdinand.  Under 
these  circumstances,  the  prosperity  of  the  Italian  States 
depended  far  more  on  the  ability  of  their  foreign  agents 
than  on  the  conduct  of  those  who  were  intrusted  with  the 
domestic  administration.  The  ambassador  had  to  discharge 
functions  far  more  delicate  than  transmitting  orders  of 
knighthood,  introducing  tourists,  or  presenting  his  brethren 
with  the  homage  of  his  high  consideration.  He  was  an 
advocate,  to  whose  management  the  dearest  interests  of  his 
clients  were  intrusted;  a  spy,  clothed  with  an  inviolable 
character.  Instead  of  consulting  the  dignity  of  those  whom 
he  represented  by  a  reserved  manner  and  an  ambiguous 
style,  he  was  to  plunge  into  all  the  intrigues  of  the  court 
at  which  he  resided,  to  discover  and  flatter  every  weakness 
of  the  prince  who  governed  his  employers,  of  the  favourite 
who  governed  the  prince,  and  of  the  lacquey  who  governed 
the  favourite.  He  was  to  compliment  the  mistress  and 
bribe  the  confessor,  to  panegyrize  or  supplicate,  to  laugh 
or  weep,  to  accommodate  himself  to  every  caprice,  to  lull 
every  suspicion,  to  treasure  every  hint,  to  be  every  thing, 


MACHIAVELLI.  87 

to  observe  every  thing,  to  endure  every  thing.  High  as 
the  art  of  political  intrigue  had  been  carried  in  Italy,  these 
were  times  which  required  it  all. 

On  these  arduous  errands  Machiavelli  was  frequently 
employed.  He  was  sent  to  treat  with  the  King  of  the 
Romans  and  with  the  Duke  of  Yalentinois.  He  was  twice 
ambassador  at  the  court  of  Rome,  and  thrice  at  that  of 
France.  In  these  missions,  and  in  several  others  of  infe- 
rior importance,  he  acquitted  himself  with  great  dexterity. 
His  despatches  form  one  of  the  most  amusing  and  instruc- 
tive collections  extant.  We  meet  with  none  of  the  myste- 
rious jargon  so  common  in  modern  state-papers,  the  flash- 
language  of  political  robbers  and  sharpers.  The  narratives 
are  clear  and  agreeably  written;  the  remarks  on  men  and 
things  clever  and  judicious.  The  conversations  are  re- 
ported in  a  spirited  and  characteristic  manner.  We  find 
ourselves  introduced  into  the  presence  of  the  men  who,  dur- 
ing twenty  eventful  years  swayed  the  destinies  of  Europe.  - 
Their  wit  and  their  folly,  their  fretfulness  and  their  mer- 
riment are  exposed  to  us.  We  are  admitted  to  overhear 
their  chat,  and  to  watch  their  familiar  gestures.  It  is  in- 
teresting and  curious  to  recognise,  in  circumstances  which 
elude  the  notice  of  historians,  the  feeble  violence  and  shal- 
low cunning  of  Louis  the  Twelfth ;  the  bustling  insignificance 
of  Maximilian,  cursed  with  an  impotent  pruriency  for  re- 
nown, rash  yet  timid,  obstinate  yet  tickle,  always  in  a  hurry, 
yet  always  too  late ; — the  fierce  and  haughty  energy  which 
gave  dignity  to  the  eccentricities  of  Julius; — the  soft  and 
graceful  manners  which  masked  the  insatiable  ambition  and 
the  implacable  hatred  of  Borgia. 

We  have  mentioned  Borgia.  It  is  impossible  not  to 
pause  for  a  moment  on  the  name  of  a  man,  in  whom  the 
political  morality  of  Italy  was  so  strongly  personified,  par- 
tially blended  with  the  sterner  lineaments  of  the  Spanish 
character.  On  two  important  occasions  Machiavelli  was 
admitted  to  his  society;  once,  at  the  moment  when  his 
splendid  villany  achieved  its  most  signal  triumph,  when 
he  caught  in  one  snare  and  crushed  at  one  blow  all  his 
most  formidable  rivals,  and  again  when,  exhausted  by 
disease,  and  overwhelmed  by  misfortunes,  which  no  human 
prudence  could  have  averted,  he  was  the  prisoner  of  the 


88  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

deadliest  enemy  of  his  house.  These  interviews,  between 
the  greatest  speculative  and  the  greatest  practical  statesmen 
of  the  age,  are  fully  described  in  the  correspondence,  and 
form  perhaps  the  most  interesting  part  of  it.  From  some 
passages  in  the  Prince,  and  perhaps  also  from  some  indis- 
tinct traditions,  several  writers  liave  supposed  a  connection 
between  those  remarkable  men  much  closer  than  ever  ex- 
isted. The  envoy  has  even  been  accused  of  promoting  the 
crimes  of  the  artful  and  merciless  tyrant.  But  from  the 
official  documents  it  is  clear  that  their  intercourse,  though 
ostensibly  amicable,  was  in  reality  hostile.  It  cannot  be 
doubted,  however,  that  the  imagination  of  Machiavelli  was 
strongly  impressed  and  his  speculations  on  government 
coloured,  by  the  observations  which  he  made  on  the  sin- 
gular character,  and  equally  singular  fortunes,  of  a  man 
who,  under  such  disadvantages,  had  achieved  such  exploits; 
who,  when  sensuality,  varied  through  innumerable  forms, 
could  no  longer  stimulate  his  sated  mind,  found  a  more 
powerful  and  durable  excitement  in  the  intense  thirst  of 
empire  and  revenge; — who  emerged  from  the  sloth  and 
luxury  of  the  Roman  purple,  the  first  prince  and  general 
of  the  age ; — who,  trained  in  an  unwarlike  profession,  formed  a 
gallant  army  out  of  the  dregs  of  an  unwarlike  people ; — who, 
after  acquiring  sovereignty  by  destroying  his  enemies,  acquired 
popularity  by  destroying  his  tools; — who  had  l3egun  to 
employ  for  the  most  salutary  ends  the  power  which  he  had 
attained  by  the  most  atrocious  means ;  who  tolerated  within 
the  sphere  of  his  iron  despotism  no  plunderer  or  oppressor 
but  himself; — and  who  fell  at  last  amidst  the  mingled 
curses  and  regrets  of  a  people,  of  whom  his  genius  had 
been  the  wonder,  and  might  have  been  the  salvation. 
Some  of  those  crimes  of  Borgia,  which  to  us  appear  the 
most  odious,  would  not,  from  causes  which  we  have  already 
considered,  have  struck  an  Italian  of  the  fifteenth  century 
with  equal  horror.  Patriotic  feeling  also  might  induce 
Machiavelli  to  look,  with  some  indulgence  and  regret,  on 
the  memory  of  the  only  leader  who  could  have  defended 
the  independence  of  Italy  against  the  confederate  spoilera 
vf  Cambray. 

On  this  subject,  Machiavelli  felt  most  strongly.     Indeed, 
&he  expulsioK  of  the  foreign  tyrants,  and  the  restoration  of 


MACHIAVELLI.  89 

that  golden  age  ^vhich  had  preceded  the  iiTuption  of  Charles 
the  Eighth,  were  projects  which,  at  that  time,  fascinated 
all  the  master-spirits  of  Italy.  The  magnificent  vision 
delighted  the  great  but  ill-regulated  mind  of  Julius.  It 
divided  with  manuscripts  and  sauces,  painters  and  falcons, 
the  attention  of  the  frivolous  Leo.  It  prompted  the  gene- 
rous treason  of  Moroue.  It  imparted  a  transient  energy 
to  the  feeble  mind  and  body  of  the  last  Sforza.  It  excited 
for  one  moment  an  honest  ambition  in  the  false  heart  of 
Pescara.  Ferocitj'  and  insolence  were  not  among  the  vices 
of  the  national  character.  To  the  discriminating  cruelties 
of  politicians,  committed  for  great  ends  on  select  victims, 
the  moral  code  of  the  Italians  was  too  indulgent.  But  though 
they  might  have  recourse  to  barbarity  as  an  expedient,  they 
did  not  require  it  as  a  stimulant.  They  turned  with  loathing 
from  the  atrocity  of  the  strangers  who  seemed  to  love  blood 
for  its  own  sake,  who,  not  content  with  subjugating,  were 
impatient  to  destroy;  who  found  a  fiendish  pleasure  in 
razing  magnificent  cities,  cutting  the  throats  of  enemies 
who  cried  for  quarter,  or  suffocating  an  unarmed  people  by 
thousands  in  the  caverns  to  which  they  had  fled  for  safety. 
Such  were  the  scenes  which  daily  excited  the  terror  and 
disgust  of  a  people,  amongst  whom,  till  lately,  the  worst 
that  a  soldier  had  to  fear  in  a  pitched  battle  was  the  loss  of 
his  horse,  and  the  expense  of  his  ransom.  The  swinish 
intemperance  of  Switzerland,  the  wolfish  avarice  of  Spain, 
the  gross  licentiousness  of  the  French,  indulged  in  violation 
of  hospitality,  of  decency,  of  love  itself,  the  wanton  inhu- 
manity which  was  common  to  all  the  invaders,  had  rendered 
them  subjects  of  deadly  hatred  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  Pe- 
ninsula."^ The  wealth  which  had  been  accumulated  during 
centuries  of  prosperity  and  repose  was  rapidly  melting 
away.  The  intellectual  superiority  of  the  oppressed  people 
only  rendered  them  more  keenly  sensible  of  their  political 
degradation.  Literature  and  taste,  indeed,  still  disguised, 
with  a  flush  of  hectic  loveliness  and  brilliancy,  the  ravages 

*Tlie  opening  stanzas  of  the  Fourteenth  Canto  of  the  Orlando 
Furioso  give  a  frightful  picture  of  the  state  of  Italy  in  those  times. 
Yet,  strange  to  say,  Ariosto  is  speaking  of  the  conduct  of  those  whc 
called  themselves  allies. 

8* 


90  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings, 

of  an  incurable  decay.  The  iron  had  not  yet  entered  into  the 
soul.  The  time  was  not  yet  come  when  eloquence  was 
to  be  gagged  and  reason  to  be  hoodwinked — when  the 
harp  of  the  poet  was  to  be  hung  on  the  willows  of  Arno, 
and  the  right  hand  of  the  painter  to  forget  its  cunning.  Yet 
a  discerning  eye  might  even  then  have  seen  that  genius  and 
learning  would  not  long  survive  the  state  of  things  from 
which  they  had  sprung; — that  the  great  men  whose  talents 
gave  lustre  to  that  melancholy  period  had  been  formed  under 
the  influence  of  happier  days,  and  would  leave  no  successors 
behind  them.  The  times  which  shine  with  the  greatest 
splendour  in  literary  history  are  not  always  those  to  which 
the  human  mind  is  most  indebted.  Of  this  we  may  be  con- 
vinced, by  comparing  the  generation  which  follows  them 
with  that  which  preceded  them.  The  first  fruits  which  are 
reaped  under  a  bad  system  often  spring  from  seed  sown 
under  a  good  one.  Thus  it  was,  in  some  measure,  with  the' 
Augustan  age.  Thus  it  was  with  the  age  of  Ilaphael  and 
Ariosto,  of  Aldus  and  Vida. 

Machiavelli  deeply  regretted  the  misfortunes  of  his 
country,  and  clearly  discerned  the  cause  and  the  remedy. 
It  was  the  military  system  of  the  Italian  people  which  had 
extinguished  their  valour  and  discipline,  and  rendered  their 
wealth  an  easy  prey  to  every  foreign  plunderer.  The 
secretary  projected  ii  scheme  alike  honourable  to  his  heart 
and  to  his  intellect,  for  abolishing  the  use  of  mercenary 
troops,  and  organizing  a  national  militia. 

The  exertions  which  he  made  to  effect  this  great  object 
ought  alone  to  rescue  his  name  from  obloquy.  Though  his 
situation  and  his  habits  were  pacific,  he  studied  with  intense 
assiduity  the  theory  of  war.  He  made  himself  master  of  all 
its  details.  The  Florentine  government  entered  into  his 
views.  A  council  of  war  was  appointed.  Levies  were  de- 
creed. The  indefatigable  minister  flew  from  place  to  place 
in  order  to  superintend  the  execution  of  his  design.  The 
times  were,  in  some  respects,  favourable  to  the  experiment. 
The  system  of  military  tactics  had  undergone  a  great  revo- 
lution. The  cavalry  was  no  longer  considered  as  forming 
the  strength  of  an  army.  The  hours  which  a  citizen  could 
spare  from  his  ordinary  employments,  though  by  no  means 
sufficient  to  familiarize  him  with  the  exercise  of  a  man-at- 


MACHIAVELLI.  91 

arms,  might  render  him  an  useful  foot-soldier.  The  dread 
of  a  foreign  yoke,  of  plunder,  massacre,  and  conflagration, 
might  have  conquered  that  repugnance  to  military  pursuits, 
which  both  the  industry  and  the  idleness  of  great  towns 
commonly  generate.  For  a  time  the  scheme  promised 
well.  The  new  troops  acquitted  themselves  respectably  in 
the  field.  ]MachiaYclli  looked  with  parental  rapture  on  the 
success  of  his  plan;  and  began  to  hope  that  the  arms  of 
Italy  might  once  more  be  formidable  to  the  barbarians  of  the 
Tagus  and  the  Rhine.  But  the  tide  of  misfortune  came  on 
before  the  barriers  which  should  have  withstood  it  were  pre- 
pared. For  a  time,  indeed,  Florence  might  be  considered 
as  peculiarly  fortunate.  Famine  and  sword  and  pestilence 
had  devastated  the  fertile  plains  and  stately  cities  of  the 
Po.  All  the  curses  denounced  of  old  against  Tyre  seemed 
to  have  fallen  on  Venice.  Her  merchants  already  stood  afar 
off",  lamenting  for  their  great  city.  The  time  seemed  near 
when  the  sea-weed  should  overgrow  her  silent  Ptialto,  and 
the  fisherman  wash  his  nets  in  her  deserted  arsenal.  Naples 
had  been  four  times  conquered  and  reconquered,  by  tyrants 
equally  indifferent  to  its  welfare,  and  equally  greedy  for  its 
spoils.  Florence,  as  yet,  had  only  to  endure  degradation  and 
extortion,  to  submit  to  the  mandates  of  foreign  powers,  to 
buy  over  and  over  again,  at  an  enormous  price,  what  was 
already  justly  her  own,  to  return  thanks  for  being  wronged, 
and  to  ask  pardon  for  being  in  the  right.  She  was  at  length 
deprived  of  the  blessings  even  of  this  infamous  and  servile 
repose.  Her  military  and  political  institutions  were  swept 
away  together.  The  Medici  returned,  in  the  train  of  foreign 
invaders,  from  their  long  exile.  The  policy  of  Machiavelli 
was  abandoned;  and  his  public  services  were  requited  with 
poverty,  imprisonment,  and  torture. 

The  fallen  statesman  still  clung  to  his  project  with  una- 
bated ardour.  With  the  view  of  vindicating  it  from  some 
popular  objections,  and  of  refuting  some  prevailing  errors 
on  the  subject  of  military  science,  he  wrote  his  seven 
books  on  the  Art  of  War.  This  excellent  work  is  in  the 
form  of  a  dialogue.  The  opinions  of  the  writer  are  put 
into  the  mouth  of  Fabrizio  Colonna,  a  powerful  nobleman 
of  the  Ecclesiastical  State,  and  an  officer  of  distinguished 
merit  iu  the  service   of  the  King  of  Spain.     He  visits  Flo- 


92  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

rence  on  his  way  from  Lombardy  to  liis  own  domains. 
He  is  invited  to  meet  some  friends  at  the  house  of  Cosimo 
Kucellui,  an  amiable  and  accomplished  young  man,  whose 
early  death  Machiavelli  feelingly  deplores.  After  partaking 
of  an  elegant  entertainment,  they  retire  from  the  heat  into 
the  most  shady  recesses  of  the  garden.  Fabrizio  is  struck 
by  the  sight  of  some  uncommon  plants.  His  host  informs 
him  that,  though  rare  in  modern  days,  they  are  frequently 
mentioned  by  the  classical  authors,  and  that  his  grandfather, 
like  many  other  Italians,  amused  himself  with  practising 
the  ancient  methods  of  gardening.  Fabrizio  expresses  his 
regret  that  those  who,  in  later  times  affected  the  manners 
of  the  old  Romans,  should  select  for  imitation  their 
most  trifling  pursuits.  This  leads  to  a  conversation  on  the 
decline  of  military  discii:)line,  and  on  the  best  means  of 
restoring  it.  The  institution  of  the  Florentine  militia  is 
ably  defended;  and  several  improvements  are  suggested  in 
the  details. 

The  Swiss  and  the  Spaniards  were,  at  that  time,  regarded 
as  the  best  soldiers  in  Europe.  The  Swiss  battalion  con- 
sisted of  pikemen,  and  bore  a  close  resemblance  to  the  Greek 
phalanx.  The  Spaniards,  like  the  soldiers  of  Home,  were 
armed  with  the  sword  and  the  shield.  The  victories  of 
Flaminius  and  ^milius  over  the  Macedonian  kings  seem 
to  prove  the  superiority  of  the  weapons  used  by  the  legions. 

The  same  experiments  had  been  recently  tried  with  the 
^ame  result  at  the  battle  of  llavenna,  one  of  those  tremen- 
dous days  into  which  human  folly  and  wickedness  compress 
the  whole  devastation  of  a  famine  or  a  plague.  In  that 
memorable  conflict,  the  infantry  of  Arragon,  the  old  com- 
panions of  Gonsalvo,  deserted  by  all  their  allies,  hewed  a 
passage  through  the  thickest  of  the  imperial  pikes,  and 
eflFected  an  unbroken  retreat,  in  the  face  of  the  gendannerie 
of  De  Foix,  and  the  renowned  artillery  of  Este.  Fabrizio, 
or  rather  Machiavelli,  proposes  to  combine  the  two  systems, 
to  arm  the  foremost  lines  with  the  pike,  for  the  purpose  of 
repulsing  cavalry,  and  those  in  the  rear  with  the  sword,  as 
being  a  weapon  better  adapted  for  every  purpose.  Through- 
out the  work,  the  author  expresses  the  highest  admiration  of 
the  military  science  of  the  ancient  Romans,  and  the  greatest 
von  tempt  for  the  maxims  which  had  been  in  vogue  amongst 


MACHIAVELLI.  93 

the  Italian  commanders  of  the  preceding  generation.  He 
prefers  infantry  to  cavalry ;  and  fortified  camps  to  fortified 
towns.  He  is  inclined  to  substitute  rapid  movements,  and 
decisive  engagements,  for  the  languid  and  dilatory  operations 
of  his  countrymen.  He  attaches  very  little  importance  to 
the  invention  of  gunpowder.  Indeed,  he  seems  to  think  that 
it  ought  scarcely  to  produce  any  change  in  the  mode  of  arm- 
ing or  of  disposing  troops.  The  general  testimony  of  his- 
torians, it  must  be  allowed,  seems  to  prove,  that  the  ill- 
constructed  and  ill-served  artillery  of  those  times,  though 
useful  in  a  siege,  was  of  little  value  on  the  field  of  battle. 

Of  the  tactics  of  Machiavelli  we  will  not  venture  to  give 
an  opinion;  but  we  are  certain  that  his  book  is  most  able 
and  interesting.  As  a  commentary  on  the  history  of  his 
times  it  is  invaluable.  The  ingenuity,  the  grace,  and  the 
perspicuity  of  the  style,  and  the  eloquence  and  animation 
of  particular  passages,  must  give  pleasure  even  to  readers 
who  take  no  interest  in  the  subject. 

The  Frince  and  the  Discourses  on  Livy  were  written 
after  the  fall  of  the  republican  government.  The  former 
was  dedicated  to  the  young  Lorenzo  de  3Iedici.  This  cir- 
cumstance seems  to  have  disgusted  the  contemporaries  of 
the  writer  far  more  than  the  doctrines  which  have  rendered 
the  name  of  the  work  odious  in  later  times.  It  was  con- 
sidered as  an  indication  of  political  apostasy.  The  fact, 
however,  seems  to  have  been  that  Machiavelli,  despairing 
0^  the  liherti/  of  Florence,  was  inclined  to  support  any 
government  which  might  preserve  her  independence.  The 
interval  which  separated  a  democracy  and  a  despotism, 
Soderini  and  Lorenzo,  seemed  to  vanish  when  compared 
with  the  difi"erence  between  the  former  and  the  present  state 
of  Italy ;  between  the  security,  the  opulence,  and  the  repose 
which  it  had  enjoyed  under  its  native  rulers,  and  the  misery 
in  which  it  had  been  plunged  since  the  fatal  year  in  which 
the  first  foreign  tyrant  had  descended  from  the  Alps.  The 
noble  and  pathetic  exhortation  with  which  the  Prince 
concludes,  shows  how  strongly  the  writer  felt  upon  this 
subject. 

The  Prince  traces  the  progress  of  an  ambitious  man,  the 
Discourses  the  progress  of  an  ambitious  people.  The  same 
principles  on  which  in  the  former  work  the  elevation  of  au 


94  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

individual  are  explained,  are  applied  in  the  latter  to 
the  longer  duration  and  more  complex  interests  of  society. 
To  a  nK)dern  statesman,  the  form  of  the  Discourses  may 
appear  to  be  puerile.  In  truth,  Livy  is  not  a  histo- 
rian on  whom  much  reliance  can  be  placed,  even  in  cases 
where  he  must  have  possessed  considerable  means  of  in- 
formation. And  his  first  Decade,  to  which  Machiavelli  has 
confined  himself,  is  scarcely  entitled  to  more  credit  than  our 
chronicle  of  British  kings  who  reigned  before  the  Roman 
invasion.  But  his  commentator  is  indebted  to  him  for 
little  more  than  a  few  texts,  which  he  might  as  easily  have 
extracted  from  the  Vulgate  or  the  Decameron.  The  whole 
train  of  thought  is  original. 

On  the  peculiar  immorality  which  has  rendered  the 
Prince  unpopular,  and  which  is  almost  equally  discernible 
in  the  Discourses,  we  have  already  given  our  opinion  at 
length.  "VYe  have  attempted  to  show  that  it  belonged 
rather  to  the  age  than  the  man;  that  it  was  a  partial  taint, 
and  by  no  means  implied  general  depravity.  We  cannot, 
however,  deny  that  it  is  a  great  blemish,  and  that  it  con- 
siderably diminishes  the  pleasure  which,  in  other  respects, 
those  works  must  afi"ord  to  every  intelligent  mind. 

It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  conceive  a  more  healthful 
and  vigorous  constitution  of  the  understanding  than  that 
which  these  works  indicate.  The  qualities  of  the  active 
and  the  contemplative  statesman  appear  to  have  been 
blended,  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  into  a  rare  and  exquisite 
harmony.  His  skill  in  the  details  of  business  had  not  been 
acquired  at  the  expense  of  his  general  powers.  It  had  not 
rendered  his  mind  less  comprehensive,  but  it  had  served  to 
correct  his  speculations,  and  to  impart  to  them  that  vivid 
and  practical  character  which  so  widely  distinguishes  them 
from  the  vague  theories  of  most  political  philosophers. 

Every  man  who  has  seen  the  world  knows  that  nothing 
is  so  useless  as  a  general  maxim.  If  it  be  very  moral  and 
very  true,  it  may  serve  for  a  copy  to  a  charity -boy.  If, 
like  those  of  Rochefoucauld,  it  be  sparkling  and  whimsical, 
it  may  make  an  excellent  motto  for  an  essay.  But  few, 
indeed,  of  the  many  wise  apophthegms  which  have  been 
uttered,  from  the  time  of  the  Seven  Sages  of  Greece  to  that 
of  Poor  Richard,  have  prevented  a  single  foolish  action 


MACHIAVELLI.  95 

We  give  the  highest  and  the  most  peculiar  praise  to  the 
precepts  of  Machiavelli,  when  we  say  that  they  may  fre- 
quently be  of  real  use  in  regulating  tjie  conduct,  not  so  much 
because  they  are  more  just  or  more  profound  than  those 
which  might  be  culled  from  other  authors,  as  because  they 
can  be  more  readily  applied  to  the  problems  of  real  life. 

There  are  errors  in  these  works.  But  they  are  errors 
which  a  writer  situated  like  Machiavelli  could  scarcely 
avoid.  They  arise,  for  the  most  part,  from  a  single  defect 
which  appears  to  us  to  pervade  his  whole  system.  In  his 
political  scheme  the  means  had  been  more  deeply  con- 
sidered than  the  ends.  The  great  principle,  that  societies 
and  laws  exist  only  for  the  purpose  of  increasing  the  sum 
of  private  happiness,  is  not  recognised  with  sufficient  clear- 
ness. The  good  of  the  body,  distinct  from  the  good  of  the 
members,  and  sometimes  hardly  compatible  with  it,  seems 
to  be  the  object  which  he  proposes  to  himself.  Of  all  po- 
litical fallacies,  this  has  had  the  widest  and  the  most  mis- 
chievous operation.  The  state  of  society  in  the  little  com- 
monwealths of  Greece,  the  close  connection  and  mutual 
dependence  of  the  citizens,  and  the  severity  of  the  laws  of 
war,  tended  to  encourage  an  opinion  which,  under  such  cir- 
cumstances, could  hardly  be  called  erroneous.  The  interests 
of  every  individual  were  inseparably  bound  up  w^ith  those 
of  the  state.  An  invasion  destroyed  his  cornfields  and 
vineyards,  drove  him  from  his  home,  and  compelled  him 
to  encounter  all  the  hardships  of  a  military  life.  A  peace 
restored  him  to  security  and  comfort.  A  victory  doubled  the 
number  of  his  slaves.  A  defeat  perhaps  made  him  a  slave 
himself.  When. Pericles,  in  the  Peloponnesian  war,  told  the 
Athenians  that  if  their  country  triumphed,  their  private 
losses  would  speedily  be  repaired,  but  that  if  their  arms 
failed  of  success,  every  individual  amongst  them  would 
probably  be  ruined,*-  he  spoke  no  more  than  the  truth. 
He  spoke  to  men  whom  the  tribute  of  vanquished  cities 
supplied  with  food  and  clothing,  with  the  luxury  of  the  bath 
and  the  amusements  of  the  theatre,  on  whom  the  greatness 
of  their  country  conferred  rank,  and  before  whom  the  mem- 
bers of  less  prosperous  communities  trembled;  and  to  men 


*  Thucydides,  ii.  62. 


96  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

who,  in  case  of  a  change  in  the  public  fortunes,  would  at 
least  be  deprived  of  every  comfort  and  every  distinction 
which  they  enjoyed.  'J'o  be  butchered  on  the  smoking  ruins 
of  their  city,  to  be  dragged  in  chains  to  a  slave-market, 
to  see  one  child  torn  from  them  to  dig  in  the  quarries  of 
Sicily,  and  another  to  guard  the  harems  of  Persepolis; 
those  were  the  frequent  and  probable  consequences  of  na- 
tional calamities.  Hence,  among  the  Grreeks,  patriotism  be- 
came a  governing  principle,  or  rather  an  ungovernable  pas- 
sion. Both  their  legislators  and  their  philosophers  took  it 
for  granted  that,  in  providing  for  the  strength  and  gTcatness 
of  the  state,  they  sufficiently  provided  for  the  happiness  of 
the  people.  The  writers  of  the  Roman  empire  lived  under 
despots  into  whose  dominion  a  hundred  nations  were  melted 
down,  and  whose  gardens  would  have  covered  the  little 
commonwealths  of  Phlius  and  Platosa.  Yet  they  continued 
to  employ  the  same  language,  and  to  cant  about  the  duty  of 
sacrificing  every  thing  to  a  country  to  which  they  owed 
nothing. 

Causes  similar  to  those  which  had  influenced  the  disposi- 
tion of  the  Greeks,  operated  powerfully  on  the  less  vigorous 
and  daring  character  of  the  Italians.  They,  too,  were  mem- 
bers of  small  communities.  Every  man  was  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  welfare  of  the  society  to  which  he  belonged — 
a  partaker  in  its  wealth  and  its  poverty,  in  its  glory  and  its 
shp,me.  In  the  age  of  Machiavelli,  this  was  peculiarly  the 
case.  Public  events  had  produced  an  immense  sum  of 
money  to  private  citizens.  The  Northern  invaders  had 
brought  want  to  their  boards,  infamy  to  their  beds,  fire  to 
their  roofs,  and  the  knife  to  their  throats.  It  was  natural 
that  a  man  who  lived  in  times  like  these  should  overrate 
the  importance  of  those  measures  by  which  a  nation  is  ren- 
dered formidable  to  its  neighbours,  and  undervalue  those 
which  make  it  prosperous  within  itself. 

Nothing  is  more  remarkable  in  the  political  treatises  of 
Machiavelli  than  the  fairness  of  mind  which  they  indicate. 
It  appears  where  the  author  is  in  the  wrong  almost  as 
strongly  as  where  he  is  in  the  right.  He  never  advances  a 
false  opinion  because  it  is  new  or  splendid,  because  he  can 
clothe  it  in  a  happy  phrase  or  defend  it  by  an  ingenious 
sophism.     His  errors  are  at  once  explained  by  a  reference 


MACIIIAVELLI.  97 

to  the  circumstances  in  which  he  was  phiced.  They  evi- 
dently were  not  sought  out ;  they  lay  in  his  way,  and  could 
scarcely  be  avoided.  Such  mistakes  must  necessarily  be 
committed  by  early  speculators  in  every  science. 

In  this  respect  it  is  amusing  to  compare  the  Prince  and 
the  Discourses  with  the  Spirit  of  Laws.  jMontesquieu  en- 
joys, perhaps,  a  wider  celebrity  than  any  political  writer  of 
modern  Europe.  Something  he  doubtless  owes  to  his  merit, 
but  much  more  to  his  fortune.  He  had  the  good  luck  of  a 
valentine.  He  caught  the  eye  of  the  French  nation  at  the 
moment  when  it  was  waking  from  the  long  sleep  of  political 
and  religious  bigotry;  and  in  consequence  he  became  a 
favourite.  The  English  at  that  time  considered  a  French- 
man who  talked  about  constitutional  checks  and  fundamental 
laws,  as  a  prodigy  not  less  astonishing  than  the  learned 
pig  or  the  musical  infant.  Specious  but  shallow,  studious  of 
effect,  indifferent  to  truth,  eager  to  build  a  system,  but  care- 
less of  collecting  those  materials  out  of  which  alone  a  sound 
and  durable  system  can  be  built,  he  constructed  theories  as 
rapidly  and  as  slightly  as  card-houses — no  sooner  projected 
than  completed — no  sooner  completed  than  blown  away — 
no  sooner  blown  away  than  forgotten.  Machiavelli  errs 
only  because  his  experience,  acquired  in  a  very  peculiar 
state  of  society,  could  not  always  enable  him  to  calculate 
the  effect  of  institutions  differing  from  those  of  which  he 
had  observed  the  operation.  31ontesquieu  errs  because  he 
has  a  fine  thing  to  say  and  is  resolved  to  say  it.  If  the 
phenomena  which  lie  before  him  will  not  suit  his  purpose, 
all  history  must  be  ransacked.  If  nothing  established  by 
authentic  testimony  can  be  raked  or  chipped  to  suit  his 
Procrustean  hypothesis,  he  puts  up  with  some  monstrous 
fable  about  Siam,  or  Bantam,  or  Japan,  told  by  writers,  com- 
pared with  whom  Lucian  and  Grulliver  were  veracious — 
liars  by  a  double  right,  as  travellers  and  as  Jesuits. 

Propriety  of  thought  and  propriety  of  diction  are  com- 
monly found  together.  Obscurity  and  affectation  are  the 
two  greatest  faults  of  style.  Obscurity  of  expression  gene- 
rally springs  from  confusion  of  ideas ;  and  the  same  wish 
to  dazzle,  at  any  cost,  which  produces  affectation  in  the 
manner  of  a  writer,  is  likely  to  produce  sophistry  in  his 
reasonings.     The  judicious  and  candid  mind  of  Machiavelli 

Vol.  I.— 9 


98  macaulay's  miscellaneous  wettings. 

shows  itself  in  his  luminous,  manly,  and  polished  language. 
The  style  of  Montesquieu,  on  the  other  hand,  indicates  in 
every  page  a  lively  and  ingenious,  but  an  unsound  mind. 
Every  trick  of  expression,  from  the  mysterious  conciseness 
of  an  oracle  to  the  flippancy  of  a  Parisian  coxcomb,  is  em- 
ployed to  disguise  the  fallacy  of  some  positions,  and  the 
triteness  of  others.  Absurdities  are  brightened  into  epi- 
grams; truisms  are  darkened  into  enigmas.  It  is  with 
difficulty  that  the  strongest  eye  can  sustain  the  glare  with 
which  some  parts  are  illuminated,  or  penetrate  the  shade  in 
which  others  are  concealed. 

The  political  works  of  Machiavelli  derive  a  peculiar  in- 
terest from  the  mournful  earnestness  which  he  manifests, 
whenever  he  touches  on  topics  connected  with  the  calami- 
ties of  his  native  land.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  any  situa- 
tion more  painful  than  that  of  a  great  man  condemned  to 
watch  the  lingering  agony  of  an  exhausted  country,  to  tend 
it  during  the  alternate  fits  of  stupefaction  and  raving  which 
precedes  its  dissolution,  to  see  the  symptoms  of  vitality  dis- 
appear one  by  one,  till  nothing  is  left  but  coldness,  darkness, 
and  corruption.  To  this  joyless  and  thankless  duty  was 
Machiavelli  called.  In  the  energetic  language  of  the  pro- 
phet, he  was  "mad  for  the  sight  of  his  eyes  which  he  saw,'' 
— disunion  in  the  council,  effeminacy  in  the  camp,  liberty 
extinguished,  commerce  decaying,  national  honour  sullied, 
an  enlightened  and  flourishing  people  given  over  to  the 
ferocity  of  ignorant  savages.  Though  his  opinions  had  not 
escaped  the  contagion  of  that  political  immorality  which  was 
common  among  his  countrymen,  his  natural  disposition  seems 
to  have  been  rather  stern  and  impetuous  than  pliant  and 
artful.  When  the  misery  and  degradation  of  Florence  and 
the  foul  outrage  which  he  had  himself  sustained  roused 
his  mind,  the  smooth  craft  of  his  profession  and  his  nation 
is  exchanged  for  the  honest  bitterness  of  scorn  and  anger. 
He  speaks  like  one  sick  of  the  calamitous  times  and  jibject 
people  among  whom  his  lot  is  cast.  He  pines  for  the 
strength  and  glory  of  ancient  Rome,  for  the  fasces  of  Bru- 
tus and  the  sword  of  Scipio,  the  gravity  of  the  curule  chair, 
and  the  bloody  pomp  of  the  triumphal  sacrifice.  He  seems 
to  be  transported  back  to  the  days,  when  eight  hundred 
thousand  Italian  warriors  sprung  to  arms  at  the  rumour  of 


MACIIIAVELLI.  •    99 

a  G-allic  invasion.  He  breathes  all  the  spirit  of  those  in- 
trepid and  haughty  patricians,  who  forgot  the  dearest  ties 
of  nature  in  the  claims  of  public  duty,  who  looked  with 
disdain  on  the  elephants  and  on  the  gold  of  Pyrrhus,  and 
listened  with  unaltered  composure  to  the  tremendous  tidings 
of  Cannas.  Like  an  ancient  temple  deformed  by  the  bar- 
barous architecture  of  a  later  age,  his  character  acquires  an 
interest  from  the  very  circumstances  which  debase  it.  The 
original  proportions  are  rendered  more  striking,  by  the  con- 
trast which  they  present  to  the  mean  and  incongruous  ad- 
ditions. 

The  influence  of  the  sentiments  which  we  have  described 
was  not  apparent  in  his  writings  alone.  His  enthusiasm, 
barred  from  the  career  which  it  would  have  selected  for 
itself,  seems  to  have  found  a  vent  in  desperate  levity.  He 
enjoyed  a  vindictive  pleasure  in  outraging  the  opinions  of 
a  society  which  he  despised.  He  became  careless  of  those 
decencies  which  were  expected  from  a  man  so  highly  dis- 
tinguished in  the  literary  and  political  world.  The  sar- 
castic bitterness  of  his  conversation  disgusted  those  who 
were  more  inclined  to  accuse  his  licentiousness  than  their 
own  degeneracy,  and  who  were  unable  to  conceive  the 
strength  of  those  emotions  which  are  concealed  by  the  jests 
of  the  wretched  and  by  the  follies  of  the  wise. 

The  historical  works  of  Machiavelli  still  remain  to  be 
considered.  The  life  of  Castruccio  Castracani  will  occupy 
us  for  a  very  short  time,  and  would  scarcely  have  demanded 
our  notice,  had  it  not  attracted  a  much  greater  share  of 
public  attention  than  it  deserves.  Few  books,  indeed, 
could  be  more  interesting  than  a  careful  and  judicious  ac- 
count, from  such  a  pen,  of  the  illustrious  Prince  of  Lucca, 
the  most  eminent  of  those  Italian  chiefs,  who,  like  Pisi- 
stratus  and  Gelon,  acquired  a  power  felt  rather  than  seen, 
and  resting,  not  on  law  or  on  prescription,  but  on  the  pub- 
lic favour  and  on  their  great  personal  qualities.  Such  a 
work  would  exhibit  to  us  the  real  nature  of  that  species  of 
sovereignty,  so  singular  and  so  often  misunderstood,  which 
the  Greeks  denominated  tyranny^  and  which  modified  in 
some  degree  by  the  feudal  system,  reappeared  in  the 
commonwealths  of  Lombardy  and  Tuscany.  But  this  little 
composition  of  Machiavelli  is  in  no  sense  a  history.     It  haa 


100*       macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

no  pretensions  to  fidelity.  It  is  a  trifle,  and  not  a  very 
successful  trifle.  It  is  scarcely  more  authentic  than  the 
novel  of  Belphegor,  and  is  very  much  duller. 

The  last  great  work  of  this  illustrious  man  was  the  his- 
tory of  his  native  city.  It  was  written  by  the  command 
of  the  Pope,  who,  as  chief  of  the  house  of  Medici,  was  at 
that  time  sovereign  of  Florence.  The  characters  of  Cosmo, 
of  Piero,  and  of  Lorenzo,  are,  however,  treated  with  a  free- 
dom and  impartiality  equally  honourable  to  the  writer  and 
to  the  patron.  The  miseries  and  humiliations  of  dependence, 
the  bread  which  is  more  bitter  than  every  other  food,  the 
stairs  which  are  more  jDainful  than  every  other  ascent*  had 
not  broken  the  spirit  of  Machiavelli.  The  most  corrupting 
post  in  a  corrupting  profession  had  not  depraved  the  gene- 
rous heart  of  Clement. 

The  history  does  not  appear  to  be  the  fruit  of  much  in- 
dustry or  research.  It  is  unquestionably  inaccurate.  But 
it  is  elegant,  lively,  and  picturesque,  beyond  any  other  in 
the  Italian  language.  The  reader,  we  believe,  carries 
away  from  it  a  more  vivid  and  a  more  faithful  impression  of 
the  national  character  and  manners,  than  from  more  correct 
accounts.  The  truth  is,  that  the  book  belongs  rather  to 
ancient  than  to  modern  literature.  It  is  in  the  style,  not 
of  Davila  and  Clarendon,  but  of  Herodotus  and  Tacitus ; 
and  the  classical  histories  may  almost  be  called  romances 
founded  in  fact.  The  relation  is,  no  doubt,  in  all  its  princi- 
pal points,  strictly  true.  But  the  numerous  little  incidents 
which  heighten  the  interest,  the  words,  the  gestures,  the 
looks,  are  evidently  furnished  by  the  imagination  of  the 
author.  The  fashion  of  later  times  is  difierent.  A  more 
exact  narrative  is  gijm  by  the  writer.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  more  exact  notions  are  conveyed  to  the  reader. 
The  best  portraits  are  those  in  which  there  is  a  slight  mix- 
ture of  caricature;  and  we  are  not  aware  that  the  best 
histories  are  not  those  in  which  a  little  of  the  exaggeration 
of  fictitious  narrative  is  judiciously  employed.  Something 
is  lost  in  accuracy;  but  much  is  gained  in  efi"ect.  The 
fainter  lines  are  neglected;  but  the  great  charactcristio 
features  are  imprinted  on  the  mind  foj.  ever. 

*  Dante  Paradiso,  cento  xvii. 


MACniAVELLI.  101 

The  history  terminates  with  the  death  of  Lorenzo  de 
Medici.  Machiavelli  had,  it  seems,  intended  to  continue  it 
to  a  Later  period.  But  his  death  prevented  the  execution 
of  his  design;  and  the  melancholy  task  of  recording  the 
desolation  and  shame  of  Italy  devolved  on  Guicciardini. 

Machiavelli  lived  long  enough  to  sec  the  commencement 
of  the  last  struggle  for  Florentine  liberty.  Soon  after  his 
death,  monarchy  was  finally  established — not  such  a  monarchy 
as  that  of  which  Cosmo  had  laid  the  foundations  deep  in  the 
constitution  and  feelings  of  his  countrymen,  and  which  Lo- 
renzo had  embellished  with  the  trophies  of  every  science  and 
every  art ;  but  a  loathsome  tyranny,  proud  and  mean,  cruel 
and  feeble,  bigoted  and  lascivious.  The  character  of  3Ia- 
chiavelli  was  hateful  to  the  new  masters  of  Italy ;  and  those 
parts  of  his  theory  which  were  in  strict  accordance  with 
their  own  daily  practice,  afforded  a  pretext  for  blacjxcning  his 
memory.  His  works  were  misrepresented  by  the  learned, 
misconstrued  by  the  ignorant,  censured  by  the  church,  abused, 
with  all  the  rancour  of  simulated  virtue,  by  the  minions  of 
a  base  despotism,  and  the  priests  of  a  baser  superstition. 
The  name  of  the  man  whose  genius  had  illuminated  all  the 
dark  places  of  policy,  and  to  whose  patriotic  wisdom  an  op- 
pressed people  had  owed  their  last  chance  of  emancipation 
and  revenge,  passed  into  a  proverb  of  infam}". 

For  more  than  two  hundred  years  his  bones  lay  undis- 
tinguished. At  length,  an  English  nobleman  paid  the  last 
honours  to  the  greatest  statesman  of  Florence.  In  the 
church  of  Santa  Croce,  a  monument  was  erected  to  his 
memory,  which  is  contemplated  with  reverence  by  all  who 
can  distinguish  the  virtues  of  a  great  mind  through  the  cor- 
ruptions of  a  degenerate  age ;  and  which  will  be  approached 
with  still  deeper  homage,  when  the  object  to  which  his  pub- 
lic life  was  devoted  shall  be  attained,  when  the  foreign  yoke 
shall  be  broken,  when  a  second  Proccita  shall  avenge  the 
wrongs  of  Naples,  when  a  happier  Rienzi  shall  restore  the 
good  estate  of  Rome,  when  the  streets  of  Florence  and 
Bologna  shall  again  resound  with  their  ancient  war  cry — 
Poj)olo  ;  ^oj^olo  ;   muoiano  i  tlranni  ! 


[Edinburgh  Review.] 

The  public  voice  has  assigned  to  Dryden  the  first  place 
in  the  second  rank  of  our  poets — no  mean  station  in  a 
table  of  intellectual  precedency  so  rich  in  illustrious  names. 
It  is  allowed  that,  even  of  the  few  who  were  his  superiors 
in  genius,  none  has  exercised  a  more  extensive  or  perma- 
nent influence  on  the  national  habits  of  thought  and  ex- 
j)ression.  His  life  was  commensurate  with  the  period 
during  which  a  great  revolution  in  the  public  taste  was 
effected ;  and  in  that  revolution  he  played  the  part  of  Crom- 
well. By  unscrupulously  taking  the  lead  in  its  wildest  ex- 
cesses, he  obtained  the  absolute  guidance  of  it.  By  tramp- 
ling on  laws,  he  acquired  the  authority  of  a  legislator.  By 
signalizing  himself  as  the  most  daring  and  irreverent  of 
rebels,  he  raised  himself  to  the  dignity  of  a  recognised 
prince.  He  commenced  his  career  by  the  most  frantic  out- 
rages. He  terminated  it  in  the  repose  of  established  sove- 
reignty— the  author  of  a  new  code,  the  root  of  a  new 
dynasty. 

Of  Dryden,  however,  as  of  almost  every  man  who  has 
been  distinguished  either  in  the  literary  or  in  the  political 
world,  it  may  be  said  that  the  course  which  he  pursued,  and 
the  effect  which  he  produced,  depended  less  on  his  personal 
qualities  than  on  the  circumstances  in  which  he  was  placed. 
Those  who  have  read  history  with  discrimination  know 
the  fallacy  of  those  panegyrics  and  invectives,  which  repre- 
sent individuals  as  effecting  great  moral  and  intellectual 
revolutions,  subverting  established  systems,  and  imprinting 
a  new  character  on  their  age.  (  The  difference  between  one 


iTt 


*  The  Poetical  Works  of  John  Deyden.     In  two  volumes.     Uni- 
versity Edition.     London,  1826. 
102 


DRYDEN.  103 

man  and  another  is  by  no  means  so  great  as  the  superstitious 
crowd  supposes.  ^But  the  same  feelings  which,  in  ancient 
Rome,  produced*^ the  apotheosis  of  a  popular  emperor,  and, 
in  modern  Rome,  the  canonization  of  a  devout  prelate,  lead 
men  to  cherish  an  illusion  which  furnishes  them  with  some- 
thing to  adore.  By  a  law  of  association,  from  the  operation 
of  which  even  minds  the  most  strictly  regulated  by  reason 
arc  not  wholly  exempt,  misery  disposes  us  to  hatred,  and 
happiness  to  love,  although  there  may  be  no  person  to  whom 
our  misery  or  our  happiness  can  be  ascribed.  The  peevish- 
ness of  an  invalid  vents  itself  even  on  those  who  alleviate 
his  pain.  The  good-humour  of  a  man  elated  by  success  often 
displays  itself  towards  enemies.  In  the  same  manner,  the 
feelings  of  pleasure  and  admiration,  to  which  the  contempla- 
tion of  great  events  gives  birth,  make  an  object  where  they 
do  not  find  it.  Thus,  nations  descend  to  the  absurdities  of 
Egyptian  idolatry,  and  worship  stocks  and  reptiles — Sache- 
verells  and  Wilkeses.  They  even  fall  prostrate  before  a 
deity  to  which  they  have  themselves  given  the  form  which 
commands  their  veneration,  and  which,  unless  fashioned  by 
them,  would  have  remained  a  shapeless  block.  They  per- 
suade themselves  that  they  are  the  creatures  of  what  they 
have  themselves  created.  For,  in  fact,  it  is  the  age  that 
forms  the  man,  not  the  man  that  forms  the  age.  Great 
minds  do  indeed  react  on  the  society  which  has  made 
them  what  they  are;  but  they  only  pay  with  interest 
what  they  have  received.  We  extol  Bacon,  and  sneer  at 
Aquinas.  But  if  their  situations  had  been  changed.  Bacon 
might  have  been  the  Angelical  Doctor,  the  most  subtle  Aris- 
totelian of  the  schools ;  the  Dominican  might  have  led  forth 
the  ^>ciences  from  their  house  of  bondage.  If  Luther  had 
been  born  in  the  tenth  century,  he  would  have  effected  no 
reformation.  If  he  had  never  been  born  at  all,  it  is  evident 
that  the  sixteenth  century  could  not  have  elapsed  without  a 
great  schism  in  the  church.  Voltaire,  in  the  days  of  Lewis 
the  Fourteenth,  would  probably  have  been,  like  most  of  the 
literary  men  of  that  time,  a  zealous  Jansenist,  eminent 
among  the  defenders  of  efficacious  grace,  a  bitter  assailant 
of  the  lax  morality  of  the  Jesuits  and  the  unreasonable 
decisions  of  the  Sorbonne.  If  Pascal  had  entered  on  his 
literary  career   when  intelligence  was   more  general,  and 


104         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

abuses  at  the  same  time  more  flagrant,  when  the  church  was 
polluted  by  the  Iscariot  Dubois,  the  court  disgraced  by  the 
orgies  of  Canillac,  and  the  nation  sacrificed  to  the  juggles 
of  Law;  if  he  had  lived  to  see  a  dynasty  of  harlots,  an 
empt}'-  treasury  and  a  crowded  harem,  an  army  formidable 
only  to  those  whom  it  should  have  protected,  a  priesthood 
just  religious  enough  to  be  intolerant,  he  might  possibly,  like 
every  man  of  genius  in  France,  have  imbibed  extravagant 
prejudices  against  monarchy  and  Christianity.  The  wit 
which  blasted  the  sophisms  of  Escobar,  the  impassioned 
eloquence  which  defended  the  sisters  of  Port  Royal,  the 
intellectual  hardihood  which  was  not  beaten  down  even 
by  Papal  authority,  might  have  raised  him  to  the  Patriarchate 
of  the  Philosophical  Church.  It  was  long  disputed  whether 
the  honour  of  inventing  the  method  of  Fluxions  belonged 
to  Newton  or  to  Leibnitz.  It  is  now  generally  allowed  that 
these  great  men  made  the  same  discovery  at  the  same  time. 
Mathematical  science,  indeed,  had  then  reached  such  a 
point,  that  if  neither  of  them  had  ever  existed,  the  principle 
must  inevitably  have  occurred  to  some  person  within  a  few 
years.  So  in  our  own  time,  the  doctrine  of  rent  now  uni- 
versally received  by  political  economists,  was  propounded 
almost  at  the  same  moment,  by  two  writers  unconnected 
with  each  other.  Preceding  speculators  had  long  been  blun- 
dering round  about  it;  and  it  could  not  possibly  have  been 
missed  much  longer  by  the  most  heedless  incjuirer.  We  are 
inclined  to  think  that,  with  respect  to  every  great  addition 
which  has  been  made  to  the  stock  of  human  knowledge,  the 
case  has  been  similar;  that  without  Copernicus  we  should 
have  been  Copernicans,  that  without  Columbus  America 
would  have  been  discovered,  that  without  Locke  we  should 
have  possessed  a  just  theory  of  the  origin  of  human  ideas. 
Society  indeed  has  its  great  men  and  its  little  men,  as  the 
earth  has  its  mountains  and  its  valleys.  But  the  inequalities 
of  intellect,  like  the  inequalities  of  the  surface  of  our  globe, 
bear  so  small  a  proportion  to  the  mass,  that,  in  calculating 
its  great  revolutions,  they  may  safely  be  neglected.  The 
sun  illuminates  the  hills,  while  it  is  still  below  the  horizon; 
and  truth  is  discovered  by  the  highest  minds  a  little  before 
it  becomes  manifest  to  the  multitude.  This  is  the  extent  of 
their  superiority.     They  are  the  first  to  catch  and  reflect  a 


DRYDEN.  105 

light,  which,  without  their  assistance,  must,  in  a  short  time, 
he  visible  to  those  who  lie  far  beneath  them. 

The  same  remark  will  apply  equally  to  the  fine  arts, 
The  laws  on  which  depend  the  progress  and  decline  of 
poetry,  painting,  and  sculpture,  operate  with  little  less 
certainty  than  those  which  regulate  the  periodical  returns 
of  heat  and  cold,  of  fertility  and  barrenness.  Those  who 
seem  to  lead  the  public  taste,  are,  in  general,  merely  out- 
running it  in  the  direction  which  it  is  spontaneously  pur- 
suing. Without  a  just  apprehension  of  the  laws  to  which 
we  have  alluded,  the  merits  and  defects  of  Dryden  can  be 
but  imperfectly  understood.  We  will,  therefore,  state  what 
we  conceive  them  to  be. 

The  ages  in  which  the  masterpieces  of  imagination  have 
been  produced,  have  by  no  means  been  those  in  which  taste 
has  been  most  correct.  It  seems  that  the  creative  faculty 
and  the  critical  faculty  cannot  exist  together  in  their  highest 
perfection.  The  causes  of  this  phenomenon  it  is  not  difficult 
to  assign. 

It  is  true  that  the  man  who  is  best  able  to  take  a  machine 
to  pieces,  and  who  most  clearly  comprehends  the  manner 
in  which  all  its  wheels  and  springs  conduce  to  its  general 
efi'ect,  will  be  the  man  most  competent  to  form  another 
machine  of  similar  power.  In  all  the  branches  of  physical 
and  moral  science  which  admit  of  perfect  analysis,  he  who 
can  resolve  will  be  able  to  combine.  But  the  analysis 
which  criticism  can  effect  of  poetry  is  necessarily  imper- 
fect. One  element  must  for  ever  elude  its  researches;  and 
that  is  the  very  element  by  which  poetry  is  poetry.  In 
the  description  of  nature,  for  example,  a  judicious  reader 
will  easily  detect  an  incongruous  image.  But  he  will  find 
it  impossible  to  explain  in  what  consists  the  art  of  a  writer 
who,  in  a  few  words,  brings  some  spot  before  him  so 
vividly  that  he  shall  know  it  as  if  he  had  lived  there  from 
childhood;  while  another,  employing  the  same  materials, 
the  same  verdure,  the  same  water,  and  the  same  flowers, 
committing  no  inaccuracy,  introducing  nothing  which  can 
be  positively  pronounced  superfluous,  omitting  nothing 
which  can  be  positively  pronounced  necessary,  shall  pro- 
duce no  more  effect  than  an  advertisement  of  a  capital  re- 
sidence and  a  desirable  pleasure-ground.     To  take  another 


106         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

example,  the  great  features  of  the  character  of  Hotspur  are 
obvious  to  the  most  superficial  reader.     We  at  once  perceive 
that  his  courage  is  splendid,  his  thirst  of  glory  intense,  his 
animal  spirits  high,  his  temper  careless,  arbitrary,  and  petu- 
lant; that   he  indulges   his    own    humour  without  caring 
whose  feelings  he  may  wound,  or  whose  enmity  he  may  pro- 
Yoke   by   his    levity.     Thus   far   criticism   will   go.     But 
something  is  still  wanting.     A  man  might  have  all  those 
qualities,  and  every  other  quality  which  the  most  minute 
examiner  can  introduce  into  his  catalogue  of  the  virtues 
and  faults  of  Hotspur,  and  yet  he  would  not  be  Hotspur. 
Almost  every  thing  that  we  have  said  of  him  applies  equally 
to  Falconbridge.     Yet  in  the  mouth  of  Falconbridge,  most 
of  his  speeches  would  seem  out  of  place.     In  real  life,  this 
perpetually  occurs.     We  are  sensible  of  wide  difi'erences '  \ 
/    between  men  whom,  if  we  are  required  to  describe  them,y 
V,   we  should  describe  in  almost  the  same  terms.     If  we  were 
attempting  to  draw  elaborate  characters  of  them,  we  should 
scarcely  be  able  to  point  out  any  strong  distinction ;  yet  we 
approach   them  with   feelings   altogether  dissimilar.  ^  We 
cannot  conceive  of  them  as  using  the  expressions  or  ges- 
tures of  each  other.     Let  us  suppose  that  a  zoologist  should 
attempt  to  give  an  account  of  some  animal,  a  porcupine  for 
instance,  to  people  who  had  never  seen  it.     The  porcupine, 
he   might  say,  is  of  the  genus  mammalia,  and  the  order 
'    ^    gliris.     There  are  whiskers  on  its  face;  it  is  two  feet  long; 
V      it  has  four  toes  before,   five   behind,  two  foreteeth,  and 
€-■  eight  grinders.     Its  body  is  covered  with  hair  and  quills. 
^       And  when  all  this  had  been  said,  would  any  one  of  the 
.  ^   auditors  have  formed  a  just  idea  of  a  porcupine?     Would 
i      ^any  two  of  them  have  formed  the  same  idea  ?     There  might 
jj^\   exist  innumerable  races  of  animals,  possessing  all  the  cha- 
•'  /^  racteristics  which  have  been  mentioned,  yet  altogether  un- 
^V  N^  like  to  each  other.     What  the  description  of  our  naturalist 
^    is  to  a  real  porcupine,  the  remarks  of  criticism  are  to  the 
'^      images  of  poetry.     What  it  so  imperfectly  decomposes,  it 
cannot  perfectly  reconstruct.     It  is  evidently  as  impossible  to 
produce  an  Othello  or  a  Macbeth  by  reversing  an  analytical 
process  so  defective,  as  it  would   be  for  an  anatomist  to 
form  a  living  man  out  of  the  fragments  of  his  dissecting- 
room.     In  both  caseS;  the  vital  principle  eludes  the  finest  in- 


DRYDEN.  107 

etruments,  and  vanishes  in  the  very  instant  in  which  its  seat 
is  touched.  Hence  those  who,  trusting  to  their  critical 
skill,  attempt  to  write  poems,  give  us,  not  images  of  things, 
but  catalogues  of  qualities.  Their  characters  are  allegories; 
not  good  men  and  bad  men,  but  cardinal  virtues  and  deadly 
sins.  We  seem  to  have  fallen  among  the  acquaintances 
of  our  old  friend  Christian :  sometimes  we  meet  Mistrust 
and  Timorous :  sometimes  Mr.  Hate-good  and  Mr.  Love-lust; 
and  then  again  Prudence,  Piety,  and  Charity. 

That  critical  discernment  is  not  sufficient  to  make  men 
poets,  is  generally  allowed.  Why  it  should  keep  them 
from  becoming  poets,  is  not  perhaps  equally  evident.  But 
the  fact  is,  that  poetry  requires  not  an  examining,  but  a 
believing  frame  of  mind.  Those  feel  it  most,  and  write  it 
best,  who  forget  that  it  is  a  work  of  art;  to  whom  its  imita- 
tions, like  the  realities  from  which  they  are  taken,  are  sub- 
jects, not  for  connoisseurship,  but  for  tears  and  laughter,  re- 
sentment and  affection;  who  are  too  much  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  illusion  to  admire  the  genius  which  has  produced 
it ;  who  are  too  much  frightened  for  Ulysses  in  the  cave  of 
Polyphemus  to  care  whether  the  pun  about  Outis  be 
good  or  bad ;  who  forget  that  such  a  person  as  Shakspeare 
ever  existed,  while  they  weep  and  curse  with  Lear.  It  is 
by  giving  faith  to  the  creations  of  the  imagination  that  a 
man  becomes  a  poet.  It  is  by  treating  those  creations  as 
deceptions,  and  by  resolving  them,  as  nearly  as  possible, 
into  their  elements,  that  he  becomes  a  critic.  In  the  mo-^ 
ment  in  which  the  skill  of  the  artist  is  perceived,  the  spell  .' 
of  the  art  is  broken. 

These  considerations  account  for  the  absurdities  into 
which  the  greatest  writers  have  fallen,  when  they  have  at- 
tempted to  give  general  rules  for  composition,  or  to  pro- 
nounce judgment  on  the  works  of  others.  They  are  unac- 
customed to  analyze  what  they  feel;  they  therefore  perpe- 
tually refer  their  emotions  to  causes  which  have  not  in  the 
slightest  degree  tended  to  produce  them.  They  feel  pleasure 
in  reading  a  book.  They  never  consider  that  this  pleasure 
may  be  the  effect  of  ideas,  which  some  unmeaning  expres- 
sion, striking  on  the  first  link  of  a  chain  of  associations,  may 
have  called  up  in  their  own  minds — that  they  have  themselves 
furnished  to  the  author  the  beauties  which  they  admire. 


108        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Cervantes  is  the  delight  of  all  classes  of  readers.  Every 
schoolboy  thumbs  to  pieces  the  most  wretched  translations 
of  his  romance,  and  kno^YS  the  lantern  jaws  of  the  knight- 
errant,  and  the  broad  cheeks  of  the  squire,  as  well  as  the 
faces  of  his  own  playfellows.  The  most  experienced  and 
fastidious  judges  are  amazed  at  the  perfection  of  that  art 
which  extracts  inextinguishable  laughter  from  the  greatest 
of  human  calamities,  without  once  violating  the  reverence 
due  to  it;  at  that  discriminating  delicacy  of  touch,  which 
makes  a  character  exquisitively  ridiculous  without  impairing 
its  worth,  its  grace,  or  its  dignity.  In  Don  Quixote  are 
several  dissertations  on  the  principles  of  poetic  and  dramatic 
writing.  No  passages  in  the  whole  work  exhibit  stronger 
marks  of  labour  and  attention;  and  no  passages  in  any 
work  with  which  we  are  acquainted  are  more  worthless  and 
puerile.  In  our  time  they  would  scarcely  obtain  admit- 
tance into  the  literary  department  of  the  Morning  Post. 
Every  reader  of  the  Divine  Comedy  must  be  struck  by  the 
veneration  which  Dante  expresses  for  writers  far  inferior 
to  himself.  He  will  not  lift  up  his  eyes  from  the  ground  in 
the  presence  of  Brunette,  all  whose  works  are  not  w^orth 
the  worst  of  his  own  hundred  cantos.  He  does  not  venture 
to  walk  in  the  same  line  with  the  bombastic  Statius.  His 
admiration  of  Virgil  is  absolute  idolatry.  If  indeed  it  had 
been  excited  by  the  elegant,  splendid,  and  harmonious  dic- 
tion of  the  Homan  poet,  it  would  not  have  been  altogether 
unreasonable;  but  it  is  rather  as  an  authority  on  all  points 
of  philosophy,  than  as  a  work  of  imagination,  that  he  values 
the  iEneid.  The  most  trivial  passages  he  regards  as  ora- 
cles of  the  highest  authority  and  of  the  most  recondite 
meaning.  He  describes  his  conductor  as  the  sea  of  all 
wisdom,  the  sun  which  heals  every  disordered  sight.  As 
he  judged  of  Virgil,  the  Italians  of  the  fourteenth  century 
judged  of  him;  they  were  proud  of  him;  they  praised 
him;  they  struck  medals  bearing  his  head;  they  quar- 
relled for  the  honour  of  possessing  his  remains;  they  main- 
tained professors  to  expound  his  writings.  But  what  they 
admired  was  not  that  mighty  imagination  which  called  a 
new  world  into  existence,  and  made  all  its  sights  and  sounds 
familiar  to  the  eye  and  ear  of  the  mind.  They  said  little 
of  those  awful  and  lovely  creations  on  which  later  critics 


DRYDEN.  109 

deligbt  to  dwell — Farinata  lifting  his  haughty  and  tranquil 
brow  from  his  couch  of  everlasting  fire — the  lion-like  re- 
pose of  Sordello— or  the  light  which  shone  from  the  celes- 
tial smile  of  Beatrice.  They  extolled  their  great  poet  for 
his  smattering  of  ancient  literature  and  history ;  for  his 
logic  and  his  divinity ;  for  his  absurd  physics,  and  his  more 
absurd  metaphysics ;  for  every  thing  but  that  in  which  ho 
pre-eminently  excelled.  Like  the  fool  in  the  story,  who 
ruined  his  dwelling  by  digging  for  gold,  which,  as  he  had 
dreamed,  was  concealed  under  its  foundations,  they  laid 
waste  one  of  the  noblest  works  of  human  genius,  by  seek- 
ing in  it  for  buried  treasures  of  wisdom,  which  existed  only 
in  their  own  wild  reveries.  The  finest  passages  were  little 
valued  till  they  had  been  debased  into  some  monstrous  alle- 
gory. Louder  applause  was  given  to  the  lecture  on  fate 
and  free-will,  or  to  the  ridiculous  astronomical  theories,  than 
to  those  tremendous  lines  which  disclose  the  secrets  of  the 
tower  of  hunger ;  or  to  that  half-told  tale  of  guilty  love,  so 
passionate  and  so  full  of  tears. 

We  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  contemporaries  of  Dante 
read,  with  less  emotion  than  their  descendants,  of  Ugolino 
groping  among  the  wasted  corpses  of  his  children,  or  of 
Francesca  startling  at  the  tremendous  kiss,  and  dropping  the 
fatal  volume.  Far  from  it.  We  believe  that  they  admired 
these  things  less  than  ourselves,  but  that  they  felt  them 
more.  We  should,  perhaps,  say,  that  they  felt  them  too 
much  to  admire  them.  The  progress  of  a  nation  from  bar- 
barism to  civilization  produces  a  change  similar  to  that 
which  takes  place  during  the  progress  of  an  individual  from 
infancy  to  mature  age.  What  man  does  not  remember  with 
regret  the  first  time  that  he  read  Robinson  Crusoe  ?  Then, 
indeed,  he  was  unable  to  appreciate  the  powers  of  the  writer; 
or  rather,  he  neither  knew  nor  cared  whether  the  book  had 
a  writer  at  all.  He  probably  thought  it  not  half  so  fine 
as  some  rant  of  Macpherson  about  dark-browed  Foldath 
and  white-bosomed  Strinadona.  He  now  values  Fingal 
and  Temora  only  as  showing  wath  how  little  evidence  a 
story  may  be  believed,  and  with  how  little  merit  a  book 
may  be  popular.  Of  the  romance  of  Defoe,  he  entertains 
the  highest  opinion.  He  perceives  the  hand  of  a  master 
in  ten  "thousand  touches,  which  formerly  he  passed  by  with- 
VOL.  I.— 10 


110        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

out  notice.  But  though  he  understands  the  merits  of  the 
narrative  better  than  formerly,  he  is  far  less  interested  by 
it.  Xury,  and  Friday,  and  pretty  Poll,  the  boat  with  the 
should er-of-mutton  sail,  and  the  canoe  which  could  not  be 
brought  down  to  the  water's  edge,  the  tent  with  its  hedge 
and  ladders,  the  preserve  of  kids,  and  the  den  where  the 
old  goat  died,  can  never  again  be  to  him  the  realities  which 
they  were. 

The  days  when  his  favourite  volume  set  him  upon  making 
wheel-barrows  and  chairs,  upon  digging  caves  and  fencing 
huts  in  the  garden,  can  never  return.  Such  is  the  law  of 
our  nature.  Our  judgment  ripens,  our  imagination  decays. 
We  cannot  at  once  enjoy  the  flowers  of  the  spring  of  life 
and  the  fruits  of  its  autumn,  the  pleasures  of  close  investi- 
gation and  those  of  agreeable  error.  We  cannot  sit  at 
once  in  the  front  of  the  stage  and  behind  the  scenes.  We  can- 
not be  under  the  illusion  of  the  spectacle,  while  we  are 
watching  the  movements  of  the  ropes  and  pulleys  which 
dispose  it. 

The  chapter  in  which  Fielding  describes  the  behaviour 
of  Partridge  at  the  theatre,  affords  so  complete  an  illustra- 
tion of  our  proposition,  that  we  cannot  refrain  from  quoting 
some  parts  of  it. 

''Partridge  gave  that  credit  to  Mr.  Garrick  which  he  had 
denied  to  Jones,  and  fell  into  so  violent  a  trembling  that 
his  knees  knocked  against  each  other.  Jones  asked  him 
what  was  the  matter,  and  whether  he  was  afraid  of  the 
warrior  upon  the  stage  ? — '  0,  la,  sir,'  said  he,  '  I  perceive 
now  it  is  what  you  told  me.  I  am  not  afraid  of  any  thing, 
for  I  know  it  is  but  a  play ;  and  if  it  was  really  a  ghost,  it 
could  do  one  no  harm  at  such  a  distance  and  in  so  much 
company ',  and  yet,  if  I  was  frightened,  I  am  not  the  only 
person.'' — ^Why,  who,'  cries  Jones,  'dost  thou  take  to  be 
such  a  coward  here,  besides  thyself?' — 'Nay,  you  may  call 
me  a  coward  if  you  will ;  but,  if  that  little  man  there  upon 
the  stage  is  not  frightened,  I  never  saw  any  man  frightened 
in  my  life.'  .  .  .  He  sat  with  his  eyes  fixed,  partly  on  the 
Ghost  and  partly  on  Hamlet,  and  with  his  mouth  open; 
the  same  passions  which  succeeded  each  other  in  Hamlet, 
succeeded  likewise  in  him. 

''Little  more  worth  remembering  occurred  during  the 


DRYDEN.  Ill 

piay,  at  the  end  of  which  Jones  asked  him  which  of  the 
players  he  liked  best.  To  this,  he  answered,  with  some  ap- 
pearance of  indignation  at  the  question,  '  The  King,  without 
doubt.' — ^Indeed,  Mr.  Partridge,'  says  Mrs.  Miller,  'you 
are  not  of  the  same  opinion  with  the  town ;  for  they  are  all 
agreed  that  Hamlet  is  acted  by  the  best  player  who  was 
ever  on  the  stage.' — '  He  the  best  player  !'  cries  Partridge, 
with  a  contemptuous  sneer;  ^why,  I  could  act  as  well  as  he 
myself.  I  am  sure,  if  I  had  seen  a  ghost,  I  should  have 
looked  in  the  very  same  manner,  and  done  just  as  he  did. 
And  then,  to  be  sure,  in  that  scene,  as  you  called  it,  between 
him  and  his  mother,  where  you  told  me  he  acted  so  fine, 
why,  any  man,  that  is,  any  good  man,  that  had  such  a  mo- 
ther, would  have  done  exactly  the  same.  I  know  you  are 
only  joking  with  me;  but,  indeed,  madam,  though  I  never 
was  at  a  play  in  London,  yet  I  have  seen  acting  before  in 
the  country,  and  the  King  for  my  money;  he  speaks  all  his 
words  distinctly,  and  half  as  loud  again  as  the  other.  Any- 
body may  see  he  is  an  actor.'  " 

In  this  excellent  passage.  Partridge  is  represented  as  a 
very  bad  theatrical  critic.  But  none  of  those  who  laugh  at 
him  possess  the  tithe  of  his  sensibility  to  theatrical  excel- 
lence. He  admires  in  the  wrong  place ;  but  he  trembles 
in  the  right  place.  It  is,  indeed,  because  he  is  so  much  ex- 
cited by  the  acting  of  Garrick,  that  he  ranks  him  below  the 
strutting,  mouthing,  performer,  who  personates  the  King. 
So,  we  have  heard  it  said,  that  in  some  parts  of  Spain  and 
Portugal,  an  actor  who  should  represent  a  depraved  charac- 
ter finely,  instead  of  calling  down  the  applauses  of  the  au- 
dience, is  hissed  and  pelted  without  mercy.  It  would  be 
the  same  in  England,  if  we,  for  one  moment,  thought  that 
Shylock  or  lago  was  standing  before  us.  While  the  dra- 
matic art  was  in  its  infancy  at  Athens,  it  produced  similar 
effects  on  the  ardent  and  imaginative  spectators.  It  is  said 
that  they  blamed  Eschylus  for  frightening  them  into  fits 
with  his  Furies.  Herodotus  tells  us,  that  when  Phrynichus 
produced  his  tragedy  on  the  fall  of  Miletus,  they  fined  him 
in  a  penalty  of  a  thousand  drachms,  for  torturing  their 
feelings  by  so  pathetic  an  exhibition.  They  did  not  regard 
him  as  a  gi*eat  artist,  but  merely  as  a  man  who  had  given 
them  pain.     When  they  woke  from  the  distressing  illusion, 


112         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

tliey  treated  the  author  of  it  as  they  would  have  treated  a 
messenger  who  should  have  brought  them  fatal  and  alarm- 
ing tidings  which  turned  out  to  be  false.  In  the  same  man- 
ner^ a  child  screams  with  terror  at  the  sight  of  a  person  in 
an  ugly  mask.  He  has,  perhaps,  seen  the  mask  put  on. 
But  his  imagination  is  too  strong  for  his  reason,  and  he  en- 
treats that  it  may  be  taken  off. 

We  should  act  in  the  same  manner,  if  the  grief  and  hor- 
ror produced  in  us  by  works  of  the  imagination  amounted 
to  real  torture.  But  in  us,  these  emotions  are  comparatively 
languid.  They  rarely  affect  our  appetite  or  our  sleep.  They 
leave  us  sufficiently  at  ease  to  trace  them  to  their  causes, 
and  to  estimate  the  powers  which  produce  them.  Our  at- 
tention is  speedily  diverted  from  the  images  which  call  forth 
our  tears,  to  the  art  by  which  those  images  have  been  se- 
lected and  combined.  We  applaud  the  genius  of  the  writer. 
We  applaud  our  own  sagacity  and  sensibility,  and  we  are 
comforted. 
I  Yet,  though  we  think  that,  in  the  progress  of  nations 
(  towards  rejSnement,  the  reasoning  powers  are  improved  at 
\  the  expense  of  the  imagination,  we  acknowledge  that  to  this 
rule  there  are  many  apparent  exceptions.  We  are  not, 
however,  quite  satisfied  that  they  are  more  than  apparent. 
Men  reasoned  better,  for  example,  in  the  time  of  Elizabeth 
than  in  the  time  of  Egbert ;  and  they  also  wrote  better 
poetry.  But  we  must  distinguish  between  poetry  as  a  men- 
tal act,  and  poetry  as  a  species  of  composition.  If  we  take  it 
in  the  latter  sense,  its  excellence  depends,  not  solely  on  the 
vigour  of  the  imagination,  but  partly  also  on  the  instruments 
which  the  imagination  employs.  Within  certain  limits, 
therefore,  poetry  may  be  improving,  while  the  poetical  fa- 
culty is  decayiDg.  The  vividness  of  the  picture  presented 
to  the  reader  is  not,  necessarily,  proportioned  to  the  vivid- 
ness of  the  prototype  which  exists  in  the  mind  of  the  writer. 
In  the  other  arts,  we  see  this  clearly.  Should  a  man,  gifted 
by  nature  with  all  the  genius  of  Canova,  attempt  to  carve  a 
statue  without  instruction  as  to  the  management  of  his  chisel, 
or  attention  to  the  anatomy  of  the  human  body,  he  would 
produce  something  compared  with  which  the  Highlander  at 
the  door  of  the  snuff-shop  would  deserve  admiration.  If  an 
uninitiated  Eaphael  were  to  attempt  a  painting,  it  would  be 


DRYDEN.  113 

a  mere  daub;  indeed,  the  connoisseurs  say,  that  the  early 
works  of  Kaphaol  are  little  beiter.  Yet,  who  can  attribute 
this  to  want  of  imagination  ?  Who  can  doubt  that  the  youth 
of  that  great  artist  was  passed  amidst  an  ideal  world  of 
beautiful  and  majestic  forms?  Or,  who  will  attribute  the 
difference  which  appears  between  his  first  rude  essays,  and 
his  magnificent  Transfiguration,  to  a  change  in  the  constitu- 
tion of  his  mind?  In  poetry,  as  in  painting  and  sculpture, 
it  is  necessary  that  the  imitator  should  be  well  acquainted 
with  that  which  he  undertakes  to  imitate,  and  expert  in  the 
mechanical  part  of  his  art.  Genius  will  not  furnish  him 
with  a  vocabulajL-y :  it  will  not  teach  him  what  word  most 
exactly  corresponds  to  his  idea  and  will  most  fully  convey 
it  to  others :  it  will  not  make  him  a  great  descriptive  poet, 
till  he  has  looked  with  attention  on  the  face  of  nature;  or  a 
great  dramatist,  till  he  has  felt  and  witnessed  much  of  the 
influence  of  the  passions.  Information  and  experience  are, 
therefore,  necessary;  not  for  the  purpose  of  strengthening 
the  imagination,  which  is  never  so  strong  as  in  people 
incapable  of  reasoning — savages,  children,  madmen,  and 
dreamers;  but  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  the  artist  to 
eommunicate  his  conceptions  to  others. 
I  In  a  barbarous  age  the  imagination  exercises  a  despotic 
'power.  So  strong  is  the  perception  of  what  is  unreal,  that 
it  often  overpowers  all  the  passions  of  the  mind,  and  all  the 
sensations  of  the  body.  At  first,  indeed,  the  phantasm  re- 
mains undivulged,  a  hidden  treasure,  a  worldless  poetry,  an 
invisible  painting,  a  silent  music,  a  dream  of  which  the  pains 
and  pleasures  exist  to  the  dreamer  alone,  a  bitterness  which 
the  heart  only  knoweth,  a  joy  with  which  a  stranger  inter- 
meddleth  not.  The  machinery  by  which  ideas  are  to  be 
conveyed  from  one  person  to  another,  is  as  yet  rude  and  de- 
fective. Between  mind  and  mind  there  is  a  great  gulf.  The 
imitative  arts  do  not  exist,  or  are  in  their  lowest  state.  But 
the  actions  of  men  amply  prove  that  the  faculty  which  gives 
birth  to  those  arts  is  morbidly  active.  It  is  not  yet  the  in- 
spiration of  poets  and  sculptors;  but  it  is  the  amusement  of 
the  day,  the  terror  of  the  night,  the  fertile  source  of  wild 
superstitions.  It  turns  the  clouds  into  gigantic  shapes,  and 
the  winds  into  doleful  voices.  The  belief  which  springs 
from  it  is  more  absolute  and  undoubting  than  any  which  can 

10* 


114        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

be  derived  from  evidence.  It  resembles  the  faith  which  we 
repose  in  our  own  sensations.  Thus,  the  Arab,  when 
covered  with  wounds,  saw  nothing  but  the  dark  eyes  and 
the  green  kerchief  of  a  beckoning  Houri.  The  Northern 
warrior  laughed  in  the  pangs  of  death,  when  he  thought  of 
the  mead  of  Valhalla. 

The  first  works  of  the  imagination  are,  as  we  have  said, 
poor  and  rude,  not  from  the  want  of  genius,  but  from  the 
want  of  materials.  Phidias  could  have  done  nothing  with 
an  old  tree  and  a  fish-bone,  or  Homer  with  the  language  of 
New  Holland. 

Yet  the  efi'ect  of  these  early  performances,  imperfect  as 
they  must  necessarily  be,  is  immense.  All  deficiencies  are 
to  be  supplied  by  the  susceptibility  of  those  to  whom  they 
are  addressed.  We  all  know  what  pleasure  a  wooden  doll, 
which  may  be  bought  for  sixpence,  will  afford  to  a  little  girl. 
She  will  require  no  other  company.  She  will  nurse  it,  dress 
it,  and  talk  to  it  all  day.  No  grown-up  man  takes  half  so 
much  delight  in  one  of  the  incomparable  babies  of  Chantrey. 
In  the  same  manner,  savages  are  more  aff"ected  by  the  rude 
compositions  of  their  bards  than  nations  more  advanced  in 
civilization  by  the  greatest  masterpieces  of  poetry. 

In  process  of  time,  the  instruments  by  which  the  imagina- 
tion works  are  brought  to  perfection.  Men  have  not  more 
imagination  than  their  rude  ancestors.  "We  strongly  suspect 
that  they  have  much  less.  But  they  produce  better  works 
of  imagination.  Thus,  up  to  a  certain  period,  the  diminution 
of  the  poetical  powers  is  far  more  than  compensated  by  the 
improvement  of  all  the  appliances  and  means  of  which  those 
powers  stand  in  need.  Then  comes  the  short  period  of  splen- 
did and  consummate  excellence.  And  then,  from  causes 
against  which  it  is  vain  to  struggle,  poetry  begins  to  decline. 
The  progress  of  language,  which  was  at  first  favourable,  be- 
comes fatal  to  it,  and,  instead  of  compensating  for  the  decay 
of  the  imagination,  accelerates  that  decay,  and  renders  it 
more  obvious.  When  the  adventurer  in  the  Arabian  tale 
anointed  one  of  his  eyes  with  the  contents  of  the  magical  box, 
all  the  riches  of  the  earth,  however  widely  dispersed,  how- 
ever sacredly  concealed,  became  visible  to  him.  But  when 
he  tried  the  experiment  on  both  eyes,  he  was  struck  with 
blindness.     What  the  enchanted  elixir  was  to  the  sight  of 


DRYDEN.  115 

the  body,  language  is  to  the  sight  of  the  imagination.  At 
first  it  calls  up  a  world  of  glorious  illusions,  but  when  it  be- 
comes too  copious,  it  altogether  destroys  the  visual  power. 

As  the  development  of  the  mind  proceeds,  symbols,  instead 
of  being  employed  to  convey  images,  are  substituted  for 
them.  Civilized  men  think  as  they  trade,  not  in  kind,  but 
by  means  of  a  circulating  medium.  In  these  circumstances 
the  sciences  improve  rapidly,  and  criticism  among  the  rest; 
but  poetry,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the  word,  disappears. 
Then  comes  the  dotage  of  the  fine  arts,  a  second  childhood, 
as  feeble  as  the  former,  and  far  more  hopeless.  This  is  the 
age  of  critical  poetry,  of  poetry  by  courtesy,  of  poetry  to 
which  the  memory,  the  judgment,  and  the  wit  contribute 
far  more  than  the  imagination.  We  readily  allow  that 
many  works  of  this  description  are  excellent;  we  will  not 
contend  with  those  who  think  them  more  valuable  than  the 
great  poems  of  an  earlier  period.  We  only  maintain  that 
they  belong  to  a  difi"erent  species  of  composition,  and  are 
produced  by  a  different  faculty. 

It  is  some  consolation  to  reflect  that  this  critical  school  of 
poetry  improves  as  the  science  of  criticism  improves;  and 
that  the  science  of  criticism,  like  every  other  science,  is  con- 
stantly tending  towards  perfection.  As  experiments  are 
multiplied,  principles  are  better  understood. 

In  some  countries,  in  our  own,  for  example,  there  has 
been  an  interval  between  the  downjfall  of  the  creative  school 
and  the  rise  of  the  critical,  a  period  during  which  imagina- 
tion has  been  in  its  decrepitude,  and  taste  in  its  infancy. 
Such  a  revolutionary  interregnum  as  this,  will  be  deformed 
by  every  species  of  extravagance. 

The  first  victory  of  good  taste  is  over  the  bombast  and 
conceits  which  deform  such  times  as  these.  But  criticism  is 
still  in  a  very  imperfect  state.  What  is  accidental,  is  for  a 
long  time  confounded  with  what  is  essential.  General  theo- 
ries are  drawn  from  detached  facts.  How  many  hours  the 
action  of  a  play  may  be  allowed  to  occupy — how  many 
similes  an  epic  poet  may  introduce  into  his  first  book, 
— whether  a  piece,  which  is  acknowledged  to  have  a  be- 
ginning and  end,  may  not  be  without  a  middle,  and  other 
questions  as  puerile  as  these,  formerly  occupied  the  atten- 
tion of  men  in  letters  in  France,  and  even  iu  this  country. 


116         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Poets,  in  such  circumstances  as  these,  exhibit  all  the  nar- 
rowness and  feebleness  of  the  criticism  by  which  their  man- 
ner has  been  fashioned.  From  outrageous  absurdity  they 
are  preserved  indeed  by  their  timidity.  But  they  perpetu- 
ally sacrifice  nature  and  reason  to  arbitrary  canons  of  taste. 
In  their  eagerness  to  avoid  the  mala  prohihita  of  a  foolish 
code,  they  are  perpetually  rushing  on  the  mala  in  se. 
Their  great  predecessors,  it  is  true,  were  as  bad  critics  as 
themselves,  or  perhaps  worse;  but  those  predecessors,  as 
we  have  attempted  to  show,  were  inspired  by  a  faculty  in- 
dependent of  criticism,  and  therefore  wrote  well  while  they 
judged  ill. 

In  time,  men  begin  to  take  more  rational  and  comprehen- 
sive views  of  literature.  The  analysis  of  poetry,  which,  as 
we  have  remarked,  must  at  best  be  imperfect,  approaches 
nearer  and  nearer  to  exactness.  The  merits  of  the  wonder- 
ful models  of  former  times  are  justly  appreciated.  The 
frigid  productions  of  a  later  age  are  rated  at  no  more  than 
their  proper  value.  Pleasing  and  ingenious  imitations  of  the 
manner  of  the  great  masters  apj^ear.  Poetry  has  a  partial 
revival,  a  St.  Martin's  summer,  which,  after  a  period  of 
dreariness  and  decay,  agreeably  reminds  us  of  the  splendour 
of  its  June.  A  second  harvest  is  gathered  in;  though,  groAv- 
ing  on  a  spent  soil,  it  has  not  the  heart  of  the  former.  Thus, 
in  the  present  age,  Monti  has  successfully  imitated  the  style 
of  Dante;  and  something  of  the  Elizabethan  inspiration  has 
been  caught  by  several  eminent  countrymen  of  our  own. 
But  never  will  Italy  produce  another  Inferno,  or  England 
another  Hamlet.  We  look  on  the  beauties  of  the  modern 
imitations  with  feelings  similar  to  those  with  which  we  see 
flowers  disposed  in  vases  to  ornament  the  drawing-rooms  of 
a  capital.  We  doubtless  regard  them  with  pleasure,  with 
greater  pleasure,  perhaps,  because,  in  the  midst  of  a  place 
ungenial  to  them,  they  remind  us  of  the  distant  spots  on 
which  they  flourish  in  spontaneous  exuberance.  But  we 
miss  the  sap,  the  freshness,  and  the  bloom.  Or,  if  we  may 
borrow  another  illustration  from  Queen  Schehcrezacle,  we 
would  compare  the  writers  of  this  school  to  the  jewellers 
who  were  employed  to  complete  the  unfinished  window  of 
the  palace  of  Aladdin.  Whatever  skill  or  cost  could  do  was 
done.     Palace  and  bazaar  were  ransacked  for  precious  stones. 


DRYDEN.  117 

Yet  the  artists,  with  all  their  dexterity,  with  all  their  as- 
siduit}^,  and  with  all  their  vast  means,  were  unable  to  pro- 
duce any  thing  comparable  to  the  wonders  which  a  spirit  of 
a  higher  order  had  wrought  in  a  single  night. 

The  history  of  every  literature  with  which  we  are  ac- 
quainted confirms,  we  think,  the  principles  which  we  have 
laid  down.  In  Greece  we  see  the  imaginative  school  of 
poetry  gradually  fading  into  the  critical.  aEschylus  anr' 
Pindar  were  succeeded  by  Sophocles ;  Sophocles  by  Euripi- 
des; Euripides  by  the  Alexandrian  versifiers.  Of  these  last, 
Theocritus  alone  has  left  compositions  which  deserve  to  be 
read.  The  splendid  and  grotesque  fairy-land  of  the  Old 
Comedy,  rich  with  such  gorgeous  hues,  peopled  with  such 
fantastic  shapes,  and  vocal  alternately  with  the  sweetest 
peals  of  music  and  the  loudest  bursts  of  elvish  laughter, 
disajDpeared  for  ever.  The  masterpieces  of  the  New  Comedy 
are  known  to  us  by  Latin  translations  of  extraordinary  merit. 
From  these  translations,  and  from  the  expressions  of  the 
ancient  critics,  it  is  clear  that  the  original  compositions  were 
distinguished  by  grace  and  sweetness,  that  they  sparkled 
with  wit  and  abounded  with  pleasing  sentiments,  but  that 
the  creative  power  was  gone.  Julius  Caesar  called  Terence 
a  half  3Ienander — a  sure  proof  that  Menander  was  not  a 
quarter  Aristophanes. 

The  literature  of  the  Romans  was  merely  a  continuation 
of  the  literature  of  the  Greeks.  The  pupils  started  from 
the  point  at  which  their  masters  had  in  the  course  of  many 
generations  arrived.  They  thus  almost  wholly  missed  the 
period  of  original  invention.  The  only  Latin  poets  whose 
writings  exhibit  much  vigour  of  imagination  are  Lucretius 
and  Catullus,  The  Augustan  age  produced  nothing  equal 
to  their  finer  passages. 

In  France,  that  licensed  jester,  whose  jingling  cap  and 
motley  coat  concealed  more  genius  than  ever  mustered  in 
the  saloon  of  Ninon  or  of  Madame  Geofi'rin,  was  succeeded 
by  writers  as  decorous  and  as  tiresome  as  gentlemen-ushers. 

The  poetry  of  Italy  and  of  Spain  has  undergone  the  same 
change,  But  nowhere  has  the  revolution  been  more  com- 
plete and  violent  than  in  England.  The  same  person  who, 
when  a  boy,  had  clapped  his  thrilling  hands  at  the  first 
representation  of  the  Tempest,  might,  without  attaining  to 


118         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

a  marvellous  longevity,  have  lived  to  read  the  earlier  worka 
of  Prior  and  Addison.  The  change,  we  believe,  must, 
sooner  or  later,  have  taken  place.  But  its  progress  was  ac- 
celerated, and  its  character  modified,  by  the  political  occur- 
rences of  the  times,  and  particularly  by  two  events,  the 
closing  of  the  theatres  under  the  Commonwealth,  and  the 
restoration  of  the  house  of  Stuart. 

We  have  said  that  the  critical  and  poetical  faculties  are 
not  only  distinct,  but  almost  incompatible  The  state  of 
our  literature  during  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth  and  James  the 
First  is  a  strong  confirmation  of  this  remark.  The  greatest 
works  of  imagination  that  the  world  has  ever  seen  were 
produced  at  that  period.  The  national  taste,  in  the  mean 
time,  was  to  the  last  degree  detestable.  Alliterations,  puns, 
antithetical  forms  of  expression  lavishly  employed  where  no 
corresponding  opposition  existed  between  the  thoughts  ex- 
pressed, strained  allegories,  pedantic  allusions,  every  thing, 
in  short,  quaint  and  aifected  in  matter  and  manner,  made 
up  what  was  then  considered  as  fine  writing.  The  eloquence 
of  the  bar,  the  pulpit,  and  the  council-board  was  deformed 
by  conceits  which  would  have  disgraced  the  rhyming  shep- 
herds of  an  Italian  academy.  The  king  quibbled  on  the 
throne.  We  might,  indeed,  console  ourselves  by  reflecting 
that  his  majesty  was  a  fool.  But  the  chancellor  quibbled 
in  concert  from  the  woolsack,  and  the  chancellor  was  Francis 
Bacon.  It  is  needless  to  mention  Sydney  and  the  whole 
tribe  of  Euphuists.  For  Shakspeare  himself,  the  greatest 
poet  that  ever  lived,  falls  into  the  same  fault  whenever  he 
means  to  be  particularly  fine.  While  he  abandons  himself 
to  the  impulse  of  his  imagination,  his  compositions  are  not 
only  the  sweetest  and  the  most  sublime,  but  also  the  most 
faultless  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  But  as  soon  as  his 
critical  powers  come  into  play,  he  sinks  to  the  level  of  Cow- 
ley, or  rather  he  does  ill  what  Cowley  did  well.  All  that 
is  bad  in  his  works  is  bad  elaborately,  and  of  malice  afore- 
thought. The  only  thing  wanting  to  make  them  perfect 
was,  that  he  should  never  have  troubled  himself  with 
thinking  whether  they  were  good  or  not.  Like  the  angels 
in  Milton,  he  sinks  ''with  compulsion  and  laborious  flight." 
His  natural  tendency  is  upwards.  That  he  may  soar,  it  is  only 
necessary  that  he  should  not  struggle  to  fall.     He  resembled 


DRYDEN.  119 

the  American  cacique,  -who,  possessing  in  unmeasured  abun- 
dance the  metals  which  in  polished  societies  are  esteemed 
the  most  precious,  was  utterly  unconscious  of  their  value,  and 
gave  up  treasures  more  valuable  than  the  imperial  crowns  of 
other  countries,  to  secure  some  gaudy  and  far-fetched  but 
worthless  bauble,  a  plated  button,  or  a  necklace  of  coloured 
glass. 

We  have  attempted  to  show  that,  as  knowledge  is  ex- 
tended, and  as  the  reason  developes  itself,  the  imitative  arts 
decay.  We  should,  therefore,  expect  that  the  corruption  of 
poetry  would  commence  in  the  educated  classes  of  society. 
And  this,  in  fact,  is  almost  constantly  the  case.  The  few 
great  works  of  imagination  which  appear  in  a  critical  age 
are,  almost  without  exception,  the  works  of  uneducated  men. 
Thus,  at  a  time  when  persons  of  quality  translated  French 
romances,  and  when  the  universities  celebrated  royal  deaths 
in  verses  about  Tritons  and  Fauns,  a  preaching  tinker  pro- 
duced the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  And  thus  a  ploughman 
startled  a  generation,  which  had  thought  Hayley  and  Beattie 
great  poets,  with  the  adventures  of  Tam  O'Shanter.  Even 
in  the  latter  part  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  the  fashionable 
poetry  had  degenerated.  It  retained  few  vestiges  of  the 
imagination  of  earlier  times.  It  had  not  yet  been  subjected  to 
the  rules  of  good  taste.  Affectation  had  completely  tainted 
madrigals  and  sonnets.  The  grotesque  conceits  and  the 
tuneless  numbers  of  Donne  were,  in  the  time  of  James,  the 
favourite  models  of  composition  at  Whitehall  and  at  the 
Temple.  But  though  the  literature  of  the  com-t  was  in  its 
decay,  the  literature  of  the  people  was  in  its  perfection. 
The  Muses  had  taken  sanctuary  in  the  theatres,  the  haunts 
of  a  class  whose  taste  was  not  better  than  that  of  the  right 
honourables  and  singular  good  lords  who  admired  meta- 
physical love-verses,  but  whose  imagination  retained  all  its 
freshness  and  vigour;  whose  censure  and  approbation  might 
be  erroneously  bestowed,  but  whose  tears  and  laughter  were 
never  in  the  wrong.  The  infection  which  had  tainted  lyric 
and  didactic  poetry  had  but  slightly  and  partially  touched 
the  drama.  While  the  noble  and  the  learned  were  com- 
paring eyes  to  burning-glasses,  and  tears  to  terrestrial  globes, 
coyness  to  an  enthymeme,  absence  to  a  pair  of  compasses, 
and  an  unrequited  passion  to  the  fortieth  remainderman  it 


120        macaulay's  iniiscellaneous  writings. 

an  entail,  Juliet  leaning  from  the  balcony,  and  Miranda 
smiling  over  the  chess-board,  sent  home  many  spectators, 
as  kind  and  simple-hearted  as  the  master  and  mistress  of 
Fletcher's  Ralpho,  to  cry  themselves  to  sleep. 

No  sj)ecies  of  fiction  is  so  delightful  to  us  as  the  old  Eng- 
lish drama.  Even  its  inferior  productions  possess  a  charm 
not  to  be  found  in  any  other  kind  of  poetry.  It  is  the  most 
lucid  mirror  that  ever  was  held  up  to  nature.  The  creations 
of  the  great  dramatists  of  Athens  produce  the  effect  of  mag- 
nificent sculptures,  conceived  by  a  mighty  imagination, 
polished  with  the  utmost  delicacy,  imbodying  ideas  of  in- 
effable majesty  and  beauty,  but  cold,  pale,  and  rigid,  with 
no  bloom  on  the  cheek,  and  no  speculation  in  the  eye.  In 
all  the  draperies,  the  figures  and  the  faces,  in  the  lovers  and 
the  tyrants,  the  Bacchanals  and  the  Furies,  there  is  the  same 
marble  chillness  and  deadness.  Most  of  the  characters  of 
the  French  stage  resemble  the  waxen  gentlemen  and  ladies 
in  the  window  of  a  perfumer,  rouged,  curled,  and  bedizened, 
but  fixed  in  such  stiff  attitudes,  and  staring  with  eyes  ex- 
pressive of  such  utter  unmeaningness,  that  they  cannot  pro- 
duce an  illusion  for  a  single  moment.  In  the  English  j)lays 
alone  is  to  be  found  the  warmth,  the  mellowness,  and  the  reality 
of  painting.  We  know  the  minds  of  the  men  and  women, 
as  we  know  the  faces  of  the  men  and  women  of  Vandyke. 

The  excellence  of  these  works  is  in  a  great  measure  the 
result  of  two  peculiarities,  which  the  critics  of  the  French 
school  consider  as  defects — from  the  mixture  of  tragedy 
and  comedy,  and  from  the  length  and  extent  of  the  action. 
The  former  is  necessary  to  render  the  drama  a  just  repre- 
sentation of  a  world,  in  which  the  laughers  and  the  weepers 
are  perpetually  jostling  each  other — in  which  every  event 
has  its  serious  and  its  ludicrous  side.  The  latter  enables 
us  to  form  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  characters,  with 
which  we  could  not  possibly  become  familiar  during  the  few 
hours  to  which  the  unities  restrict  the  poet.  In  this  respect 
the  works  of  Shakspeare,  in  particular,  are  miracles  of  art. 
In  a  piece,  which  may  be  read  aloud  in  three  hours,  we  see 
a  character  gradually  unfold  all  its  recesses  to  us.  We  see 
it  change  with  the  change  of  circumstances.  The  petulant 
youth  rises  into  the  politic  and  warlike  sovereign.  The 
profuse  and  courteous  philanthropist  sours  into  a  hater  and 


DRYDEN.  121 

scorner  of  his  kind.  The  tyrant  is  altered,  by  the  chasten- 
ing of  affliction,  into  a  pensive  moralist.  The  veteran  gene- 
ral, distinguished  by  coolness,  sagacity,  and  self-command, 
sinks  under  a  conflict  between  love,  strong  as  death,  and 
jealousy,  cruel  as  the  grave.  The  brave  and  loyal  subject 
passes,  step  by  step,  to  the  extremities  of  human  depravity. 
We  trace  his  progress  from  the  first  dawnings  of  unlawful 
ambition,  to  the  cynical  melancholy  of  his  impenitent  re- 
morse. Yet,  in  these  pieces,  there  are  no  unnatural  transi- 
tions. Nothing  is  omitted :  nothing  is  crowded.  Great  as 
are  the  changes,  narrow  as  is  the  compass  within  which  they 
are  exhibited,  they  shock  us  as  little  as  the  gradual  alterations 
of  those  familiar  faces  which  we  see  every  evening  and  every 
morning.  The  magical  skill  of  the  poet  resembles  that  of 
the  Dervise  in  the  Spectator,  who  condensed  all  the  events 
of  seven  years  into  the  single  moment  during  which  the 
king  held  his  head  under  the  water. 

It  is  deserving  of  remark,  that  at  the  time  of  which  we 
speak,  the  plays  even  of  men  not  eminently  distinguished 
by  genius — such,  for  example,  as  Jonson — were  far  supe- 
rior to  the  best  works  of  imagination  in  other  departments. 
Therefore,  though  we  conceive  that,  from  causes  which  we 
have  already  investigated,  our  poetry  must  necessarily  have 
declined,  we  think  that,  unless  its  fate  had  been  accelerated 
by  external  attacks,  it  might  have  enjoyed  an  euthanasia — 
that  genius  might  have  been  kept  alive  by  the  drama  till  its 
place  could,  in  some  degree,  be  supplied  by  taste — that 
there  would  have  been  scarcely  any  interval  between  the 
age  of  sublime  invention  and  that  of  agreeable  imitation. 
The  works  of  Shakspeare,  which  were  not  appreciated  with 
any  degree  of  justice  before  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  might  then  have  been  the  recognised  standards  of 
excellence  during  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth;  and 
he  and  the  great  Elizabethan  writers  might  have  been  almost 
immediately  succeeded  by  a  generation  of  poets,  similar  to 
those  who  adorn  our  own  times. 

But  the  Puritans  drove  imagination  from  its  last  asylum. 
They  prohibited  theatrical  representations,  and  stigmatized 
the  whole  race  of  dramatists  as  enemies  of  morality  and 
religion.     Much  that  is  objectionable  may  be  found  in  the 

Vol.  I.— 11 


122         macaulat's  miscellaneous  writings. 

writers  whom  they  reprobated;  but  whether  they  took  the 
best  measures  for  stopping  the  evil,  appears  to  us  very  doubt- 
ful, and  must,  we  think,  have  appeared  doubtful  to  them- 
selves, when,  after  the  lapse  of  a  few  years,  they  saw  the 
unclean  spirit  whom  they  had  cast  out,  return  to  his  old 
haunts  with  seven  others  fouler  than  himself. 

By  the  extinction  of  the  drama,  the  fashionable  school  of 
poetry — a  school  without  truth  of  sentiment  or  harmony 
of  versification — without  the  powers  of  an  earlier  or  the 
correctness  of  a  later  age — ^was  left  to  enjoy  undisputed 
ascendency.  A  viscious  ingenuity,  a  morbid  quickness  to 
perceive  resemblances  and  analogies  between  things  appa- 
cn  rently  heterogeneous,  constituted  almost  its  only  claim  to 
n::  'admiration.     Suckling  was  dead.     Milton  was  absorbed  in 

^0^      political  and  theological  controversy.     If  Waller  differed 
/^,      from  the  Cowleian  sect  of  writers,  he  differed  for  the  worse. 

v^  He  had  as  little  poetry  as  they,  and  much  less  wit :  nor  is 
the  languor  of  his  verses  less  offensive  than  the  ruggedness 
of  theirs.  In  Denham  alone  the  faint  dawn  of  a  better 
manner  was  discernible. 

But,  low  as  was  the  state  of  our  poetry  during  the  civil 
war  and  the  Protectorate,  a  still  deeper  fall  was  at  hand. 
Hitherto  our  literature  had  been  idiomatic.  In  mind,  as  in 
situation,  we  had  been  islanders.  The  revolutions  in  our 
taste,  like  the  revolutions  in  our  government,  had  been  set- 
tled without  the  interference  of  strangers.  Had  this  state 
of  things  continued,  the  same  just  principles  of  reasoning, 
which,  about  this  time,  were  applied  with  unprecedented 
success  to  every  part  of  philosophy,  would  soon  have  con- 
ducted our  ancestors  to  a  sounder  code  of  criticism.  There 
were  already  strong  signs  of  improvement.  Our  prose  had 
at  length  worked  itself  clear  from  those  quaint  conceits 
which  still  deformed  almost  every  metrical  composition. 
The  parliamentary  debates,  and  the  diplomatic  correspond- 
ence of  that  eventful  period,  had  contributed  much  to 
this  reform.  la  such  bustling  times,  it  was  absolutely  neces- 
sary to  speak  and  write  to  the  purpose.  The  absurdities 
of  Puritanism  had,  perhaps,  done  more.  At  the  time  when 
that  odious  style,  which  deforms  the  writings  of  Hall  and 
of  Lord  Bacon,  was  almost  universal,  had  appeared  that 
stupendous  work,  the   English   Bible — a  book  which,  if 


DRYDEN.  123 

every  thing  else  in  our  language  should  perish,  would  alone 
suffice  to  show  the  whole  extent  of  its  beauty  and  power. 
The  respect  which  the  translators  felt  for  the  original  pre- 
vented them^  from  adding  any  of  the  hideous  decorations 
then  in  fashion.  The  groundwork  of  the  version,  indeed, 
was  of  an  earlier  age.  The  familiarity  with  which  the  Puri- 
tans, on  almost  every  occasion,  used  the  scriptural  phrases 
was,  no  doubt,  very  ridiculous;  but  it  produced  good  effects! 
It  was  a  cant ;  but  it  drove  out  a  cant  far  more  offensive. 

The  highest  kind  of  poetry  is,  in  a  great  measure,  inde- 
pendent of  those  circumstances  which  regulate  the  style  of 
composition  in  prose.  But  with  that  inferior  species  of  po- 
etry which  succeeds  to  it,  the  case  is  widely  different.  In  a 
few  years,  the  good  sense  and  good  taste  which  had  weeded 
out  affectation  from  moral  and  political  treatises  would,  in 
the  natural  course  of  things,  have  effected  a  similar  reform 
in  the  sonnet  and  the  ode.  The  rigour  of  the  victorious 
sectaries  had  relaxed.  A  dominant  religion  is  never  as- 
cetic. The  government  connived  at  theatrical  representa- 
tions. The  influence  of  Shakspeare  was  once  more  felt.  But 
darker  days  were  approaching.  A  foreign  yoke  was  to  be 
imposed  on  our  literature.  Charles,  surrounded  by  the  com- 
panions of  his  long  exile,  returned  to  govern  a  nation  which 
ought  never  to  have  cast  him  out,  or  never  to  have  received 
him  back.  Every  year  which  he  had  passed  among  stran- 
gers had  rendered  him  more  unfit  to  rule  his  countrymen. 
In  France,  he  had  seen  the  refractory  magistracy  humbled, 
and  royal  prerogative,  though  exercised  by  a  foreign  priest 
in  the  name  of  a  child,  victorious  over  all  opposition.  This 
spectacle  naturally  gratified  a  prince  to  whose  family  the 
opposition  of  parliaments  had  been  so  fatal.  Politeness  was 
his  solitary  good  quality.  The  insults  which  he  had  suf- 
fered in  Scotland  had  taught  him  to  prize  it.  The  effemi- 
■  nacy  and  apathy  of  his  disposition  fitted  him  to  excel  in  it. 
The  elegance  and  vivacity  of  the  French  manners  fascinated 
him.  With  the  political  maxims  and  the  social  habits  of 
his  favourite  people,  he  adopted  their  taste  in  composition  ; 
and,  when  seated  on  the  tlirone,  soon  rendered  it  fashion- 
able, partly  by  direct  patronage,  but  still  more  by  that  con- 
temptible policy  which,  for  a  time,  made  England  the  last 
of  the  nations,  and  raised  Louis  the  Fourteenth  to  a  height 


124  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

of  power  and  fame,  sucli  as  no  French  sovereign  had  ever 
before  attained. 

It  was  to  please  Charles  that  rhyme  was  first  introduced 
into  our  plays.  Thus,  a  rising  blow,  which  would  at  any 
time  have  been  mortal,  was  dealt  to  the  English  drama, 
then  just  recovering  from  its  languishing  condition.  Two 
detestable  manners,  the  indigenous  and  the  imported,  were 
now  in  a  state  of  alternate  conflict  and  amalgamation.  The 
bombastic  meanness  of  the  new  style  was  blended  with  the 
ingenious  absurdity  of  the  old ;  and  the  mixture  ';)roduced 
something  which  the  world  had  never  before  seen,  and 
which,  we  hope,  it  will  never  see  again — something,  by  the 
side  of  which  the  worst  nonsense  of  all  other  ages  appears 
to  advantage — something,  which  those  who  have  attempted 
to  caricature  it,  have,  against  their  will,  been  forced  to  flat- 
ter— of  which  the  tragedy  of  Bayes  is  a  very  favourable 
specimen.  What  Lord  Dorset  observed  to  Edward  Howard, 
might  have  been  addressed  to  almost  all  his  contempora- 
ries : — 

"As  skilful  divers  to  the  bottom  fall, 
Swifter  than  those  who  cannot  swim  at  all; 
So,  in  this  way  of  writing  without  thinking, 
Thou  hast  a  strange  alacrity  in  sinking." 

From  this  reproach,  some  clever  men  of  the  world  must 
be  excepted,  and  among  them  Dorset  himself.  Though  by 
no  means  great  poets,  or  even  good  versifiers,  they  always 
wrote  with  meaning,  and  sometimes  with  wit.  Nothing  in- 
deed more  strongly  shows  to  what  a  miserable  state  litera- 
ture had  fallen,  than  the  immense  superiority  which  the 
occasional  rhymes,  carelessly  thrown  on  paper  by  men  of 
this  class,  possess  over  the  elaborate  productions  of  almost 
all  the  professed  authors.  The  reigning  taste  was  so  bad, 
that  the  success  of  a  writer  was  in  inverse  proportion  to  his 
labour,  and  to  his  desire  of  excellence.  An  exception  must 
be  made  for  Butler,  who  had  as  much  wit  and  learning  as 
Cowley,  and  who  knew,  what  Cowley  never  knew,  how  to 
use  them.  A  great  command  of  good  homely  English  dis- 
tinguishes him  still  more  from  the  other  writers  of  the 
time.  As  for  Gondibert,  those  may  criticise  it  who  can 
read  it.  Imagination  was  extinct.  Taste  was  depraved, 
l^oetry,  driven  from  palaces,  colleges,  and  theatres,   had 


DRYDEN.  125 

found  an  asylum  in  the  obscure  dwelling,  where  a  great 
man,  born  out  of  due  season,  in  disgrace,  penury,  pair,  and 
blindness,  still  kept  uncontaminated  a  character  and  a  ge- 
nius worthy  of  a  better  age. 

Every  thing  about  Milton  is  wonderful ;  but  nothing  is  so 
wonderful  as  that,  in  an  age  so  unfavourable  to  poetry,  he 
should  have  produced  the  greatest  of  modern  epic  poems. 
We  are  not  sure  that  this  is  not  in  some  degree  to  be  attri- 
buted to  his  want  of  sight.  The  imagination  is  notoriously 
most  active  when  the  external  world  is  shut  out.  In  sleep 
its  illusions  are  perfect.  They  produce  all  the  effect  of  re- 
alities. In  darkness  its  visions  are  always  more  distinct  than 
in  the  light.  Every  person  who  amuses  himself  with  what 
is  called  building  castles  in  the  air,  must  have  experienced 
this.  We  know  artists,  who,  before  they  attempt  to  draw  a 
face  from  memory,  close  their  eyes,  that  they  may  recall  a 
more  perfect  image  of  the  features  and  the  expression.  We 
are  therefore  inclined  to  believe,  that  the  genius  of  Milton 
may  have  been  preserved  from  the  influence  of  times  so  un- 
favourable to  it,  by  his  infirmity.  Be  this  as  it  may,  his 
works  at  first  enjoyed  a  very  small  share  of  popularity.  To 
be  neglected  by  his  contemporaries  was  the  penalty  which 
he  paid  for  surpassing  them.  His  great  poem  was  not  gene- 
rally studied  or  admired,  till  writers,  far  inferior  to  him,  had, 
by  obsequiously  cringing  to  the  public  taste,  acquired  suffi- 
cient favour  to  reform  it. 

Of  these,  Dry  den  was  the  most  eminent.  Amidst  the 
crowd  of  authors,  who,  during  the  earlier  years  of  Charles 
the  Second,  courted  notoriety  by  every  species  of  absurdity 
and  affectation,  he  speedily  became  conspicuous.  No  man 
exercised  so  much  influence  on  the  age.  The  reason  is  ob- 
vious. On  no  man  did  the  age  exercise  so  much  influence. 
He  was,  perhaps,  the  greatest  of  those  whom  we  have  desig- 
nated as  the  critical  poets;  and  his  literary  career  exhi- 
bited, on  a  reduced  scale,  the  whole  history  of  the  school 
to  which  he  belonged,  the  rudeness  and  extravagance  of  its 
infancy,  the  propriety,  the  grace,  the  dignified  good  sense, 
the  temperate  splendour  of  its  maturity.  His  imagination 
was  torpid,  till  it  was  awakened  by  his  judgment.  He  began 
with  quaint  parallels  and  empty  mouthing.  He  gradually 
acquired  the  energy  of  the  satirist,  the  gravity  of  the  moral- 

11* 


126        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

ist,  the  rapture  of  the  lyric  poet.  The  revolution  through 
which  English  literature  has  been  passing,  from  the  time  of 
Cowley  to  that  of  Scott,  may  be  seen  in  miniature  within 
the  compass  of  his  volumes. 

His  life  divides  itself  into  two  parts.  There  is  some  de- 
batable ground  on  the  common  frontier:  but  the  line  may 
be  drawn  with  tolerable  accuracy.  The  year  1678  is  that 
on  which  we  should  be  inclined  to  fix  as  the  date  of  a  great 
change  in  his  manner.  During  the  preceding  period  ap- 
peared some  of  his  courtly  panegyrics — his  Annus  Mira- 
bilis,  and  most  of  his  plays ;  indeed,  all  his  rhyming  trage- 
dies. To  the  subsequent  period  belong  his  best  dramas — 
All  for  Love,  The  Spanish  Friar,  and  Sebastian — his  sa- 
tires, his  translations,  his  didactic  poems,  his  fables,  and  his 
odes. 

Of  the  small  pieces  which  were  presented  to  chancellors 
and  princes,  it  would  scarcely  be  fair  to  speak.  The  greatest 
advantage  which  the  fine  arts  derive  from  the  extension  of 
knowledge  is,  that  the  patronage  of  individuals  becomes  un- 
necessary. Some  writers  still  aiFect  to  regret  the  age  of  pa- 
tronage. None  but  bad  writers  have  reason  to  regret  it.  It 
is  always  an  age  of  general  ignorance.  AVhere  ten  thousand 
readers  are  eager  for  the  appearance  of  a  book,  a  small  con- 
tribution from  each  makes  up  a  splendid  remuneration  for 
the  author.  Where  literature  is  a  luxury,  confined  to  few, 
each  of  them  must  pay  high.  If  the  Empress  Catharine, 
for  example,  wanted  an  epic  poem,  she  must  have  wholly 
supported  the  poet; — just  as,  in  a  remote  country  village,  a 
man  who  wants  a  mutton-chop  is  sometimes  forced  to  take 
the  whole  sheep ; — a  thing  which  never  happens  where  the 
demand  is  large.  But  men  who  pay  largely  for  the  gratifi- 
cation of  their  taste,  will  expect  to  have  it  united  with  some 
gratification  to  their  vanity.  Flattery  is  carried  to  a  shame- 
less extent;  and  the  habit  of  flattery  almost  inevitably  in- 
troduces a  false  taste  into  composition.  Its  language  is 
made  up  of  hyperbolical  commonplaces — offensive  from  their 
triteness — and  still  more  offensive  from  their  extravagance. 
In  no  school  is  the  trick  of  overstepping  the  modesty  of 
nature  so  speedily  acquired.  The  writer,  accustomed  to 
find  exaggeration  acceptable  and  necessary  on  one  subject, 
uses  it  on  all.     It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  the  earl^ 


DRYDEN.  127 

panegyrical  verses  of  Dryden  should  be  made  up  of  mean- 
ness and  bombast.  They  abound  with  the  conceits  which 
his  immediate  predecessors  had  brought  into  fashion.  But 
his  language  and  his  versification  were  already  far  superior 
to  theirs. 

The  Annus  Mirabilis  shows  great  command  of  expres- 
sion, and  a  fine  ear  for  heroic  rhyme.  Here  its  merits  end. 
Not  only  has  it  no  claim  to  be  called  poetry;  but  it  seems  to 
be  the  work  of  a  man  who  could  never,  by  any  possibility, 
write  poetry.  Its  afi"ected  similes  are  the  best  part  of  it. 
Gaudy  weeds  present  a  more  encouraging  spectacle  than 
utter  barrenness.  There  is  scarcely  a  single  stanza  in  this 
long  work,  to  which  the  imagination  seems  to  have  contri- 
buted any  thing.  It  is  produced,  not  by  creation,  but  by 
construction.  It  is  made  up,  not  of  pictures,  but  of  infer- 
ences. We  will  give  a  single  instance,  and  certainly  a 
favourable  instance — a  quatrain  which  Johnson  has  praised. 
Dryden  is  describing  the  sea-fight  with  the  Dutch. 

"Amidst  whole  heaps  of  spices  lights  a  ball; 
And  now  their  odours  armed  against  them  fly, 
Some  preciously  by  shattered  porcelain  fall, 
And  some  by  aromatic  splinters  die." 

The  poet  should  place  his  readers,  as  nearly  as  possible,  in 
the  situation  of  the  sufferers  or  the  spectators.  His  narra- 
tion ought  to  produce  feelings  similar  to  those  which  would 
be  excited  by  the  event  itself.  Is  this  the  case  here  ?  Who, 
in  a  sea-fight,  ever  thought  of  the  price  of  the  china  which 
beats  out  the  brains  of  a  sailor;  or  of  the  odour  of  the 
splinter  which  shatters  his  leg  ?  It  is  not  by  an  act  of  the 
imagination,  at  once  calling  up  the  scene  before  the  interior 
eye,  but  by  painful  meditation — by  turning  the  subject 
round  and  round — by  tracing  out  facts  into  remote  conse- 
quences, that  these  incongruous  topics  are  introduced  into 
the  description.  Homer,  it  is  true,  perpetually  uses  epithets 
which  are  not  peculiarly  appropriate.  Achilles  is  the  swift- 
footed,  when  he  is  sitting  still.  Ulysses  is  the  much-endur- 
ing, when  he  has  nothing  to  endure.  Every  spear  casts  a 
long  shadow ;  every  ox  has  crooked  horns ;  and  every  wo- 
man a  high  bosom,  though  these  particulars  may  be  quite 
beside  the  purpose.     In  our  old  ballads,  a  similar  practice 


128        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

prevails.  The  gold  is  always  red,  and  the  ladies  always 
gay,  though  nothing  whatever  may  depend  -on  the  hue  of 
gold,  or  the  temper  of  the  ladies.  But  these  adjectives  are 
mere  customary  additions.  They  merge  in  the  substantives 
to  which  they  are  attached.  If  they  at  all  colour  the  idea,  it 
is  with  a  tinge  so  slight,  as  in  no  respect  to  alter  the  general 
effect.  In  the  passage  which  we  have  quoted  from  Dryden, 
the  case  is  very  different.  Preciously  and  aromatic  divert 
our  whole  attention  to  themselves,  and  dissolve  the  image 
of  the  battle  in  a  moment.  The  whole  poem  reminds  us  of 
Lucan,  and  of  the  worst  parts  of  Lucan,  the  sea-fight  in 
the  bay  of  Marseilles,  for  example.  The  description  of  the 
two  fleets  during  the  night  is  perhaps  the  only  passage 
which  ought  to  be  exempted  from  this  censure.  If  it  was 
from  the  Annus  Mirabilis  that  Milton  formed  his  opinion, 
when  he  pronounced  Dryden  a  good  rhymer,  but  no  poet, 
he  certainly  judged  correctly.  But  Dryden  was,  as  we 
have  said,  one  of  those  writers,  in  whom  the  period  of  ima- 
gination does  not  precede,  but  follow,  the  period  of  observa- 
tion and  reflection. 

His  plays,  his  rhyming  plays  in  particular,  are  admirable 
subjects  for  those  who  wish  to  study  the  morbid  anatomy 
of  the  drama.  He  was  utterly  destitute  of  the  power  of 
exhibiting  real  human  beings.  Even  in  the  far  inferior 
talent  of  composing  characters  out  of  those  elements  into 
which  the  imperfect  process  of  our  reason  can  resolve  them, 
he  was  very  deficient.  His  men  are  not  even  good  personi- 
fications ;  they  are  not  well-assorted  assemblages  of  qualities. 
Now  and  then,  indeed,  he  seizes  a  very  coarse  and  marked 
distinction  -,  and  gives  up,  not  a  likeness,  but  a  strong  cari- 
cature, in  which  a  single  peculiarity  is  protruded,  and  every 
thing  else  neglected;  like  the  Marquis  of  Granby  at  an 
inn  door,  whom  we  know  by  nothing  but  his  baldness ;  or 
Wilkes,  who  is  Wilkes  only  in  his  squint.  These  are  the 
best  specimens  of  his  skill.  For  most  of  his  pictures  seem, 
like  Turkey  carpets,  to  have  been  expressly  designed  not  to 
resemble  any  thing  in  the  heavens  above,  in  the  earth  be- 
neath, or  in  the  waters  under  the  earth. 

The  latter  manner  he  practises  most  frequently  in  his 
tragedies,  the  former  in  his  comedies.  The  comic  charao« 
ters  are,  without  mixtui-e,  loathsome  and  despicable.     The 


DRYDEN.  129 

men  of  Etherege  and  Vanbrugh  are  bad  enough;  those  of 
Smollet  are  perhaps  worse.  But  thej  do  not  approach  to 
the  Celadons,  the  Wildbloods^  the  Woodalls,  and  the  E,h&- 
dophils  of  Dry  den.  The  vices  of  these  last  are  set  off  by  a 
certain  fierce,  hard  impudence,  to  which  we  know  nothing 
comparable.  Their  love  is  the  appetite  of  beasts,  their  friend- 
ship the  confederacy  of  knaves.  The  ladies  seem  to  have 
been  expressly  created  to  form  helps  meet  for  such  gentle- 
men. In  deceiving  and  insulting  their  old  fathers,  they  do 
not  perhaps  exceed  the  license  which,  by  immemorial  pre- 
scription, has  been  allowed  to  heroines.  But  they  also  cheat 
at  cards,  rob  strong  boxes,  put  up  their  favours  to  auction, 
betray  their  friends,  abuse  their  rivals  in  a  style  of  Billings- 
gate, and  invite  their  lovers  in  the  language  of  the  Piazza. 
These,  it  must  be  remembered,  are  not  the  valets  and  wait- 
ing-women, the  Mascarilles  and  Nerines,  but  the  recognised 
heroes  and  heroines,  who  appear  as  the  representatives  of 
good  society,  and  who,  at  the  end  of  the  fifth  act,  marry 
and  live  very  happily  ever  after.  The  sensuality,  baseness, 
and  malice  of  their  natures  are  unredeemed  by  any  quality 
of  a  different  description,  by  any  touch  of  kindness,  or  even 
by  an  honest  burst  of  hearty  hatred  and  revenge.  We  are 
in  a  world  where  there  is  no  humanity,  no  veracity,  no 
sense  of  shame — a  world  for  which  any  good-natured  man 
would  gladly  take  in  exchange  the  society  of  Milton's  devils. 
But  as  soon  as  we  enter  the  regions  of  Tragedy,  we  find  a 
great  change;  there  is  no  lack  of  the  fine  sentiment  there. 
Metastasio  is  surpassed  in  his  own  department.  Scuderi  is 
out-scuderied.  We  are  introduced  to  people  whose  proceed- 
ings we  can  trace  to  no  motive — of  whose  feelings  we  can 
form  no  more  idea  than  of  a  sixth  sense.  We  have  left  a 
race  of  creatures,  whose  love  is  as  delicate  and  affectionate 
as  the  passion  which  an  alderman  feels  for  a  turtle.  We 
find  ourselves  among  beings,  whose  love  is  purely  disinte- 
rested emotion — a  loyalty  extending  to  passive  obedience — 
a  religion  like  that  of  the  Quietists,  unsupported  by  any 
sanction  of  hope  or  fear.  We  see  nothing  but  despotism 
without  power,  and  sacrifices  without  compensation. 

We  will  give  a  few  instances : — In  Aurengzebe,  Arimant, 
governor  of  Agra,  falls  in  love  with  his  prisoner  Indamora. 
She  rejects  his  suit  with  scorn,  but  assures  him  that  she 


130         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

shall  make  great  use  of  her  power  over  him.  He  threatensi 
to  be  angry.     She  answers^  very  coolly : 

**  Do  not:  your  anger,  like  your  love,  is  vain: 
Whene'er  I  please,  you  must  be  pleased  again. 
Knowing  "what  power  I  have  your  will  to  bend, 
I'll  use  it ;  for  I  need  just  such  a  friend." 

This  is  no  idle  menace.  She  soon  brings  a  letter  addressed 
to  his  rival,  orders  him  to  read  it,  asks  him  whether  he 
thinks  it  sufficiently  tender,  and  finally  commands  him  to 
carry  it  himself.  Such  tyranny  as  this,  it  may  be  thought, 
would  justify  resistance.  Arimant  does  indeed  venture  to 
remonstrate : 

*'  This  fatal  paper  rather  let  me  tear, 
Than,  like  Bellerophon,  my  sentence  bear." 

The  answer  of  the  lady  is  incomparable : 

*'  You  may ;  but  'twill  not  be  your  best  advice ; 
'Twill  only  give  me  pains  of  writing  twice. 
You  know  you  must  obey  me  soon  or  late ; 
Why  should  you  vainly  struggle  with  your  fate  ?" 

Poor  Arimant  seems  to  be  of  the  same  opinion.  He 
mutters  something  about  fate  and  free-will,  and  walks  off 
with  the  billet-doux. 

In  the  Indian  Emperor,  Montezuma  presents  Almeria 
with  a  garland  as  a  token  of  his  love,  and  offers  to  make 
her  his  queen.     She  replies: 

"  I  take  this  garland,  not  as  given  by  you; 
But  as  my  merit's  and  my  beauty's  due  ; 
As  for  the  crown  which  you,  my  slave,  possess, 
To  share  it  with  you  would  but  make  me  less." 

In  return  for  such  proofs  of  tenderness  as  these,  her 
admirer  consents  to  murder  his  two  sons,  and  a  benefactor, 
to  whom  he  feels  the  warmest  gratitude.  Lyndaraxa,  in 
the  Conquest  of  Granada,  assumes  the  same  lofty  tone  with 
Abdelmelech.     He  complains  that  she  smiles  upon  his  rival 


PRYDEN.  131 

"  Lynd.   And  when  did  I  my  power  so  far  resign, 

That  you  should  regulate  each  look  of  mine. 
Abdel.  Then,  when  you  gave  your  love,  you  gave  that  powei. 
Lynd.    'Twas  during  pleasure — 'tis  revoked  this  hour. 
Abdel.  I'll  hate  you,  and  this  visit  is  my  last. 
Lynd.   Do,  if  you  can;  you  know  I  hold  you  fast." 

That  these  passages  violate  all  historical  propriety — that 
sentiments  to  which  nothing  similar  was  ever  even  affected, 
except  by  the  cavaliers  of  Europe,  are  transferred  to  Mexico 
and  Agra,  is  a  light  accusation.  We  have  no  objection  to  a 
conventional  world,  an  Illyrian  puritan,  or  a  Bohemian  sea- 
port. While  the  faces  are  good,  we  care  little  about  the 
background.  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  says,  that  the  curtains 
and  hangings  in  an  historical  painting  ought  to  be,  not 
velvet  or  cotton,  but  merely  drapery.  The  same  principle 
should  be  applied  to  poetry  and  romance.  The  truth  of 
character  is  the  fii*st  object;  the  truth  of  place  and  time  is 
to  be  considered  only  in  the  second  place.  Puff  himself 
could  tell  the  actor  to  turn  out  his  toes,  and  remind  him  that 
Keeper  Hatton  was  a  great  dancer.  We  wish  that,  in  our 
own  time,  a  writer  of  a  very  different  order  from  Puff  had 
not  too  often  forgotten  human  nature  in  the  nicotics  of  up- 
holstery, millinery,  and  cookery. 

We  blame  Dryden,  not  because  the  persons  of  his  dramas 
are  not  Moors  or  Americans,  but  because  they  are  not  men 
and  women;  not  because  love,  such  as  he  represents  it,  could 
not  exist  in  a  harem  or  in  a  wigwam,  but  because  it  could 
not  exist  anywhere.  As  is  the  love  of  his  heroes,  such  are 
all  their  other  emotions.  All  their  qualities,  their  courage, 
their  generosity,  their  pride,  are  on  the  same  colossal  scale. 
Justice  and  prudence  are  virtues  which  can  exist  only  in  a 
moderate  degree,  and  which  change  their  nature  and  their 
name  if  pushed  to  excess.  Of  justice  and  prudence,  there- 
fore, Dryden  leaves  his  favourites  destitute.  He  did  not 
care  to  give  them  what  he  could  not  give  without  measure. 
The  tyrants  and  ruffians  are  merely  the  heroes  altered  by  a 
few  touches,  similar  to  those  which  transformed  the  honest 
face  of  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  into  the  Saracen's  head. 
Through  the  grin  and  frown,  the  original  features  are  still 
perceptible. 

It  is  in  the  tragicomedies  that  these  absurdities  strike  us 


132         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

most.  The  two  races  of  men,  or  rather  the  angels  and  th^ 
baboons,  are  there  presented  to  us  together.  We  meet  in 
one  scene  with  nothing  but  gross,  selfish,  unblushing,  lying 
libertines  of  both  sexes,  who,  as  a  punishment,  we  suppose, 
for  their  depravity,  are  condemned  to  talk  nothing  but 
prose.  But  as  soon  as  we  meet  with  people  who  speak  in 
verse,  we  know  that  we  are  in  society  which  would  have 
enraptured  the  Cathos  and  Madelon  of  Moliere,  in  society 
for  which  Oroondates  would  have  too  little  of  the  lover, 
Clelia  too  much  of  the  coquette. 

As  Dryden  was  unable  to  render  his  plays  interesting  by 
means  of  that  which  is  the  peculiar  and  appropriate  excel- 
lence of  the  drama,  it  was  necessary  that  he  should  find 
some  substitute  for  it.  In  his  comedies  he  supplied  its 
place,  sometimes  by  wit,  but  more  frequently  by  intrigue, 
by  disguises,  mistakes  of  persons,  dialogues  at  cross  pur- 
poses, hairbreadth  escapes,  j^erplexing  concealments,  and 
surprising  disclosures.  He  thus  succeeded  at  least  in 
making  these  pieces  very  amusing. 

In  his  tragedies  he  trusted,  and  not  altogether  without 
reason,  to  his  diction  and  his  versification.  It  was  on  this 
account,  in  all  probability,  that  he  so  eagerly  adopted  and 
BO  reluctantly  abandoned  the  practice  of  rhyming  in  his 
plays.  What  is  unnatural  appears  less  unnatural  in  that 
species  of  verse,  than  in  lines  which  approach  more  nearly 
to  common  conversation;  and  in  the  management  of  the 
heroic  couplet,  Dryden  has  never  been  equalled.  It  is 
unnecessary  to  urge  any  arguments  against  a  fashion  now 
universally  condemned.  But  it  is  worthy  of  observation, 
that  though  Dryden  was  deficient  in  that  talent  which  blank 
verse  exhibits  to  the  greatest  advantage,  and  was  certainly 
the  best  writer  of  heroic  rhyme  in  our  language,  yet  the 
plays  which  have,  from  the  time  of  their  first  appearance, 
been  considered  as  his  best,  are  in  blank  verse.  No  expe- 
riment can  be  more  decisive. 

It  must  be  allowed,  that  the  worst  even  of  the  rhyming 
tragedies  contains  good  description  and  magnificent  rhe- 
toric. But  even  when  we  forget  that  they  are  plays,  and, 
passing  by  their  dramatic  improprieties,  consider  them  with 
reference  to  the  language,  we  are  perpetually  disgusted  by 
passages  which  it  is  difficult  to  conceive  how  any  author 


DRYDEN.  133 

could  have  written  or  any  audience  have  tolerated ;  rants  in 
which  the  raving  violence  of  the  manner  forms  a  strange 
contrast  with  the  abject  tameness  of  the  thought.  The 
author  laid  the  whole  fault  on  the  audience,  and  declared, 
that  when  he  wrote  them,  he  considered  them  bad  enough 
to  please.  This  defence  is  unworthy  of  a  man  of  genius, 
and,  after  all,  is  no  defence.  Otway  pleased  without  rant ; 
and  so  might  Dryden  have  done,  if  he  had  possessed  the 
powers  of  Otway.  The  fact  is,  that  he  had  a  tendency  to 
bombast,  which,  though  subsequently  corrected  by  time  and 
thought,  was  never  wholly  removed,  and  which  showed 
itself  in  performances  not  designed  to  please  the  rude  mob 
of  the  theatre. 

Some  indulgent  critics  have  represented  this  failing  as  an 
indication  of  genius,  as  the  profusion  of  unlimited  wealth, 
the  wantonness  of  exuberant  vigour.  To  us  it  seems  to  bear 
a  nearer  affinity  to  the  tawdriness  of  poverty,  or  the  spasms 
and  convulsions  of  weakness.  Dryden  surely  had  not  more 
imagination  than  Homer,  Dante,  or  Milton,  who  never  fall 
into  this  vice.  The  swelling  diction  of  JEschylus  and  Isaiah 
resembles  that  of  Almanzor  and  Maximin  no  more  than  the 
tumidity  of  a  muscle  resembles  the  tumidity  of  a  boil.  The 
former  is  symptomatic  of  health  and  strength,  the  latter  of 
debility  and  disease.  If  ever  Shakspeare  rants,  it  is  not 
when  his  imagination  is  hurrying  him  along,  but  when  he 
is  hurrying  his  imagination  along — when  his  mind  is  for  a 
moment  jaded — when,  as  was  said  of  Euripides,  he  resembles 
a  lion,  who  excites  his  own  fury  by  lashing  himself  with 
his  tail.  What  happened  to  Shakspeare  from  the  occasional 
suspension  of  his  powers,  happened  to  Dryden  from  constant 
impotence.  He,  like  his  confederate  Lee,  had  judgment 
enough  to  appreciate  the  great  poets  of  the  preceding  age, 
but  not  judgment  enough  to  shun  competition  with  them. 
He  felt  and  admired  their  wild  and  daring  sublimity.  That 
it  belonged  to  another  age  than  that  in  which  he  lived,  and 
required  other  talents  than  those  which  he  possessed ;  that, 
in  aspiring  to  emulate  it,  he  was  wasting,  in  a  hopeless  at- 
tempt, powers  which  might  render  him  pre-eminent  in  a  dif- 
ferent career,  was  a  lesson  which  he  did  not  learn  till  late. 
As  those  knavish  enthusiasts,  the  French  prophets,  courted 
inspiration,  by  mimicking  the  writhings,  swooniugs,  and 

Vol.  L— 12 


134         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

gaspings,  which  they  considered  as  its  symptoms,  he  at- 
tempted, by  affected  fits  of  poetical  fury,  to  bring  on  a  real 
paroxysm ;  and,  like  them,  he  got  nothing  but  his  distortions 
for  his  pains. 

Horace  very  happily  compares  those  who,  in  his  time, 
imitated  Pindar,  to  the  youth  who  attempted  to  fly  to  heaven 
on  waxen  wings,  and  who  experienced  so  fatal  and  ignomi- 
nious a  fall.  His  own  admirable  good  sense  preserved  him 
from  this  error,  and  taught  him  to  cultivate  a  style  in  which 
excellence  was  within  his  reach.  Dry  den  had  not  the  same 
self-knowledge.  He  saw  that  the  greatest  poets  were  never 
BO  successful  as  when  they  rushed  beyond  the  ordinary 
bounds,  and  that  some  inexplicable  good  fortune  preserved 
them  from  tripping,  even  when  they  staggered  on  the  brink 
of  nonsense.  He  did  not  perceive  that  they  were  guided 
and  sustained  by  a  power  denied  to  himself.  They  wrote 
from  the  dictation  of  the  imagination,  and  they  found  a  re- 
sponse in  the  imaginations  of  others.  He,  on  the  contrary, 
sat  down  to  work  himself,  by  reflection  and  argument,  into 
a  deliberate  wildness,  a  rational  frenzy. 

In  looking  over  the  admirable  designs  which  accompany 
the  Faust,  we  have  always  been  much  struck  by  one  which 
represents  the  wizard  and  the  tempter  riding  at  full  speed. 
The  demon  sits  on  his  furious  horse  as  heedlessly  as  if  he 
were  reposing  on  a  chair.  That  he  should  keep  his  saddle 
in  such  a  posture,  would  seem  impossible  to  any  who  did 
not  know  that  he  was  secure  in  the  privileges  of  a  superhu- 
man nature.  The  attitude  of  Faust,  on  the  contrary,  is  the 
perfection  of  horsemanship.  Poets  of  the  first  order  might 
safely  write  as  desperately  as  Mephistopheles  rode.  But 
Dryden,  though  admitted  to  communion  with  higher  spirits, 
though  armed  with  a  portion  of  their  power,  and  intrusted 
with  some  of  their  secrets,  was  of  another  race.  What 
they  might  securely  venture  to  do,  it  was  madness  in  him 
to  attempt.  It  was  necessary  that  taste  and  critical  science 
should  supply  its  deficiencies. 

We  will  give  a  few  examples.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than 
the  description  of  Hector  at  the  Grecian  wall. 


DRYDEN.  135 

"S/mtgifoLKiai,  rev  aa-To  Tn^i  X'^-'^'  ^'^'^  ^^  XK^'^ 

AiJ/g'   i\iV  CVK   UV   T/f  /UtV  i^VKUKU  AVrt^OAilTAi, 

Kco-fi  d-iixv,  cr   i(rctKro  ttvauc'  ttv^i  J"  arin  Jiifiiu 
AuTiKct  i'  01  y.&  Tux^i  v7n^i2Ao-'j.v,  ci  Si  k'Xt'  ctuntf 

HoiU'TCLZ    iTi^VTO  TTUKA;.        A:tVU.Ol   i''  i^O^H^'O/ 

N«Ac  eLvx  yKAipvgcii'  ofjLctjSoi  tf"  AXt^ta-Toi;  STy;^3-«. 

What  daring  expressions !  Yet  how  significant !  How 
picturesque !  Hector  seems  to  rise  up  in  his  strength  and 
fury.  The  gloom  of  night  in  his  frown — the  fire  burning  in 
his  eyes — the  javelins  and  the  blazing  armour — the  mighty 
rush  through  the  gates  and  down  the  battlements — the 
trampling  and  the  infinite  roar  of  the  multitude — every 
thing  is  with  us;  every  thing  is  real. 

Dry  den  has  described  a  very  similar  event  m  Maximin, 
and  has  done  his  best  to  be  sublime,  as  follows : 

*'  There  with  a  forest  of  their  darts  he  strove, 
And  stood  like  Capaneus  defying  Jove  ; 
With  his  broad  sword  the  boldest  beating  down, 
Till  Fate  grew  pale,  lest  he  should  win  the  town, 
And  turned  the  iron  leaves  of  its  dark  book 
To  make  new  dooms,  or  mend  what  it  mistook." 

How  exquisite  is  the  imagery  of  the  fairy  songs  in  the 
Tempest  and  the  Midsummer  Night's  Dream;  Ariel  riding 
through  the  twilight  on  the  bat,  or  sucking  in  the  bells  of 
flowers  with  the  bee;  or  the  little  bower-women  of  Titania, 
driving  the  spiders  from  the  couch  of  the  Queen !  Dryden 
truly  said,  that 

<'  Shakspeare's  magic  could  not  copied  be; 
Within  the  circle  none  durst  walk  but  he." 

It  would  have  been  well  if  he  had  not  himself  dared  to  step 
within  the  enchanted  line,  and  drawn  on  himself  a  fate  simi- 
lar to  that  which,  according  to  the  old  superstition,  punished 
such  presumptuous  interferences.  The  following  lines  are 
parts  of  the  song  of  his  fairies : 

**  Merry,  merry,  merry,  we  sail  from  the  East, 
Half-tippled  at  a  rainbow  feast. 
In  the  bright  moonshine,  while  winds  whistle  loud, 
Tivy,  tivy,  tivy,  we  mount  and  we  fly. 
All  racking  along  in  a  downy  white  cloud ; 


136         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

And  lest  our  leap  from  the  sky  prove  too  far, 
We  slide  on  the  back  of  a  new  falling  star, 
And  drop  from  above 
In  a  jelly  of  love." 

These  are  very  favourable  instances.  Those  who  wish  for  a 
bad  one  may  read  the  dying  speeches  of  Maximin,  and  may 
compare  them  with  the  last  scenes  of  Othello  and  Lear. 

If  Dryden  had  died  before  the  expiration  of  the  first  of 
the  periods  into  which  we  have  divided  his  literary  life,  he 
would  have  left  a  reputation,  at  best,  little  higher  than  that 
of  Lee  or  Davenant.  He  would  have  been  known  only  to 
men  of  letters;  and  by  them  he  would  have  been  mentioned 
as  a  writer  who  threw  away,  on  subjects  which  he  was 
incompetent  to  treat,  powers  which,  judiciously  employed, 
might  have  raised  him  to  eminence;  whose  diction  and 
whose  numbers  had  sometimes  very  high  merit,  but  all 
whose  works  were  blemished  by  a  false  taste  and  by  errors 
of  gross  negligence.  A  few  of  his  prologues  and  epilogues 
might  perhaps  have  still  been  remembered  and  quoted.  In 
these  little  pieces,  he  early  showed  all  the  powers  which 
afterwards  rendered  him  the  greatest  of  modern  satirists. 
But  during  the  latter  part  of  his  life,  he  gradually  abandoned 
the  drama.  His  plays  appeared  at  longer  intervals.  He 
renounced  rhyme  in  tragedy.  His  language  became  less 
turgid,  his  characters  less  exaggerated.  He  did  not  indeed 
produce  correct  representations  of  human  nature;  but  he 
ceased  to  daub  such  monstrous  chimeras  as  those  which 
abound  in  his  earlier  pieces.  Here  and  there  passages 
occur  worthy  of  the  best  ages  of  the  British  stage.  The 
style  which  the  drama  requires,  changes  with  every  change 
of  character  and  situation.  He  who  can  vary  his  manner  to 
suit  the  variation,  is  the  great  dramatist ;  but  he  who  excels 
in  one  manner  only,  will,  when  that  manner  happens  to  be 
appropriate,  appear  to  be  a  great  dramatist;  as  the  hands 
of  a  watch,  which  does  not  go,  point  right  once  in  the  twelve 
hours.  Sometimes  there  is  a  scene  of  solemn  debate.  This 
a  mere  rhetorician  may  write  as  well  as  the  greatest  trage- 
dian that  ever  lived.  We  confess  that  to  us  the  speech  of 
Sempronius  in  Cato  seems  very  nearly  as  good  as  8hak- 
Bpeare  could  have  made  it.  But  when  the  senate  breaks  up, 
and  we  find  that  the  lovers  and  their  mistresses,  the  hero 


DRYDEN.  137 

tlie  villain,  and  the  deputy  villain,  all  continue  to  harangue 
in  the  same  style,  we  perceive  the  difference  between  a  man 
who  can  write  a  play  and  a  man  who  can  write  a  speech. 
In  the  same  manner,  wit,  a  talent  for  description,  or  a  talent 
for  naiTation,  may,  for  a  time,  pass  for  dramatic  genius. 
Dryden  was  an  incomparable  reasoner  in  verse.  He  was 
conscious  of  his  power ;  he  was  proud  of  it ;  and  the  au- 
thors of  the  Rehearsal  justly  charged  him  with  abusing  it. 
His  warriors  and  princesses  are  fond  of  discussing  points  of 
amorous  casuistry,  such  as  would  have  delighted  a  Parlia- 
ment of  Love.  They  frequently  go  still  deeper,  and  specu- 
late on  philosophical  necessity  and  the  origin  of  evil. 

There  were,  however,  some  occasions  which  absolutely 
required  this  peculiar  talent.  Then  Dryden  was  indeed  at 
home.  All  his  best  scenes  are  of  this  description.  They 
are  all  between  men ;  for  the  heroes  of  Dryden,  like  many 
other  gentlemen,  can  never  talk  sense  when  ladies  are  in 
company.  They  are  all  intended  to  exhibit  the  empire  of 
reason  over  violent  passion.  "W^e  have  two  interlocutors,  the 
one  eager  and  impassioned,  the  other  high,  cool,  and  judi- 
cious. The  composed  and  rational  character  gradually 
acquires  the  ascendency.  His  fierce  companion  is  first 
inflamed  to  rage  by  his  reproaches,  then  overawed  by  his 
equanimity,  convinced  by  his  arguments,  and  soothed  by  his 
persuasions.  This  is  the  case  in  the  scene  between  Hector 
and  Troilus,  in  that  between  Antony  and  Ventidius,  and  in 
that  between  Sebastian  and  Dorax.  Nothing  of  the  same 
kind  in  Shakspeare  is  equal  to  them,  except  the  quarrel  be- 
tween Brutus  and  Cassius,  which  is  worth  them  all  three. 

Some  years  before  his  death,  Dryden  altogether  ceased  to 
write  for  the  stage.  He  had  turned  his  powers  in  a  new  di- 
rection, with  success  the  most  splendid  and  decisive.  His 
taste  had  gradually  awakened  his  creative  faculties.  The 
first  rank  in  poetry  was  beyond  his  reach,  but  he  challenged 
and  secured  the  most  honourable  place  in  the  second.  His 
imagination  resembled  the  wings  of  an  ostrich.  It  enabled 
him  to  run,  though  not  to  soar.  When  he  attempted  the 
highest  flights,  he  became  ridiculous )  but  while  he  remained 
in  a  lower  region,  he  outstripped  all  competitors. 

All  his  natural  and  all  his  acquired  powers  fitted  him  to 
found  a  good  critical  school  of  poetry.  Indeed,  he  carried 
12* 


138         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

his  reforms  too  far  for  his  age.  After  his  death,  our  literature 
retrograded ;  and  a  century  was  necessary  to  bring  it  back 
to  the  point  at  which  he  left  it.  The  general  soundness 
and  healthfulness  of  his  mental  constitution  ;  his  informa- 
tion, of  vast  superficies  though  of  small  volume ;  his  wit, 
scarcely  inferior  to  that  of  the  most  distinguished  followers 
of  Donne ;  his  eloquence,  grave,  deliberate,  and  commanding, 
could  not  save  him  from  disgraceful  failure  as  a  rival  of 
Shakspeare,  but  raised  him  far  above  the  level  of  Boileau. 
His  command  of  language  was  immense.  With  him  died 
the  secret  of  the  old  poetical  diction  of  England — the  art  of 
producing  rich  effects  by  familiar  words.  In  the  following 
century,  it  was  as  completely  lost  as  the  Gothic  method  of 
painting  glass,  and  was  but  poorly  supplied  by  the  laborious 
and  tesselated  imitations  of  Mason  and  Gray.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  was  the  first  writer  under  whose  skilful  manage- 
ment the  scientific  vocabulary  fell  into  natural  and  pleasing 
verse.  In  this  department,  he  succeeded  as  completely  as 
his  contemporary  Gibbons  succeeded  in  the  similar  enter- 
prise of  carving  the  most  delicate  flowers  from  heart  of  oak. 
The  toughest  and  most  knotty  parts  of  language  became 
ductile  at  his  touch.  His  versification,  in  the  same  manner, 
while  it  gave  the  first  model  of  that  neatness  and  precision 
which  the  following  generation  esteemed  so  highly,  exhi- 
bited, at  the  same  lime,  the  last  examples  of  nobleness, 
freedom,  variety  of  pause  and  cadence.  His  tragedies  in 
rhyme,  however  worthless  in  themselves,  had  at  least  served 
the  purpose  of  nonsense-verses :  they  had  taught  him  all 
the  arts  of  melody  which  the  heroic  couplet  admits.  For 
bombast,  his  prevailing  vice,  his  new  subjects  gave  little 
opportunity  :  his  better  taste  gradually  discarded  it. 

He  possessed,  as  we  have  said,  in  a  pre-eminent  degree, 
the  power  of  reasoning  in  verse ;  and  this  power  was  now 
peculiarly  useful  to  him.  His  logic  is  by  no  means  uniformly 
sound.  On  points  of  criticism,  he  always  reasons  ingenious- 
ly ;  and  when  he  is  disposed  to  be  honest,  correctly.  But 
the  theological  and  political  questions,  which  he  undertook 
to  treat  in  verse,  were  precisely  those  which  he  understood 
least.  His  arguments,  therefore,  are  often  worthless.  But 
the  manner  in  which  they  are  stated  is  beyond  all  praise. 
The  style  is  transparent.     The  topics  follow  each  other  in 


DRYDEN.  139 

the  happiest  order.  The  objections  are  drawn  up  in  such  a 
manner,  that  the  whole  fire  of  the  reply  may  be  brought 
to  bear  on  them.  The  circumlocutions  which  are  substi- 
tuted for  technical  phrases,  are  clear  neat,  and  exact.  The 
illustrations  at  once  adorn  and  elucidate  the  reasoning. 
The  sparkling  epigrams  of  Cowley,  and  the  simple  garrulity 
of  the  burlesque  poets  of  Italy,  are  alternately  employed, 
in  the  happiest  manner,  to  give  effect  to  what  is  obvious,  or 
clearness  to  what  is  obscure. 

His  literary  creed  was  catholic,  even  to  latitudinarianism ; 
not  from  any  want  of  acuteness,  but  from  a  disposition  to 
be  easily  satisfied.  He  was  quick  to  discern  the  smallest 
glimpse  of  merit ;  he  was  indulgent  even  to  gross  impro- 
prieties, when  accompanied  by  any  redeeming  talent. 
When  he  said  a  severe  thing,  it  was  to  serve  a  temporary 
purpose, — to  support  an  argument,  or  to  tease  a  rival. 
Never  was  so  able  a  critic  so  free  from  fastidiousness.  He 
loved  the  old  poets,  especially  Shakspeare.  He  admired 
the  ingenuity  which  Donne  and  Cowley  had  so  wildly 
abused.  He  did  justice,  amidst  the  general  silence,  to  the 
memory  of  Milton.  He  praised  to  the  skies  the  schoolboy 
lines  of  Addison.  Always  looking  on  the  fair  side  of  every 
object,  he  admired  extravagance  on  account  of  the  invention 
which  he  supposed  it  to  indicate  ',  he  excused  affectation  in 
favour  of  wit ;  he  tolerated  even  tameness  for  the  sake  of 
the  correctness  which  was  its  concomitant. 

It  was  probably  to  this  turn  of  mind,  rather  than  to  the 
more  disgraceful  causes  which  Johnson  had  assigned,  that 
we  are  to  attribute  the  exaggeration  which  disfigures  the 
panegyrics  of  Dry  den.  No  writer,  it  must  be  owned,  has 
carried  the  flattery  of  dedication  to  a  greater  length.  But 
this  was  not,  we  suspect,  merely  interested  servility ;  it  was 
the  overflowing  of  a  mind  singularly  disposed  to  admiration, 
— of  a  mind  which  diminished  vices,  and  magnified  virtues 
and  obligations.  The  most  adulatory  of  his  addresses  is 
that  in  which  he  dedicates  the  State  of  Innocence  to  Mary 
of  Modena.  Johnson  thinks  it  strange  that  any  man  should 
use  such  language  without  self-detestation.  But  he  has  not 
remarked,  that  to  the  very  same  work  is  prefixed  an  eulo- 
gium  on  Milton,  which  certainly  could  not  have  been  accept- 
able at  the  court  of  Charles  the  Second.     Many  years  later, 


140         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings, 

when  Whig  principles  were  in  a  great  measure  triumphant, 
Sprat  refused  to  admit  a  monument  of  John  Philips  into 
Westminister  Abbey,  because,  in  the  epitaph,  the  name  of 
Milton  incidentally  occurred.  The  walls  of  his  church,  he 
declared,  should  not  be  polluted  by  the  name  of  a  republi- 
can !  Dryden  was  attached,  both  by  principle  and  interest 
to  the  court.  But  nothing  could  deaden  his  sensibility  to 
excellence.  We  are  unwilling  to  accuse  him  severely,  be- 
cause the  same  disposition,  which  prompted  him  to  pay  so 
generous  a  tribute  to  the  memory  of  a  poe1>whom  his  patrons 
detested,  hurried  him  into  extravagance  when  he  described 
a  princess,  distinguished  by  the  splendour  of  her  beauty 
and  the  graciousness  of  her  manners. 

This  is  an  amiable  temper  3  but  it  is  not  the  temper  of 
great  men.  Where  there  is  elevation  of  character,  there 
will  be  fastidiousness.  It  is  only  in  novels  and  on  tomb- 
stones, that  we  meet  with  people  who  are  indulgent  to  the 
faults  of  others  and  unmerciful  to  their  own ;  and  Dryden, 
at  all  events,  was  not  one  of  these  paragons.  His  charity 
was  extended  most  liberally  to  others,  but  it  certainly  began 
at  home.  In  taste  he  was  by  no  means  deficient.  His 
critical  works  are,  beyond  all  comparison,  superior  to  any 
which  had,  till  then,  appeared  in  England.  They  were  gene- 
rally intended  as  apologies  for  his  own  poems,  rather  than 
as  expositions  of  general  principles;  he  therefore  often 
attempts  to  deceive  the  reader  by  sophistry  which  could 
scarcely  have  deceived  himself.  His  dicta  are  the  dicta, 
not  of  a  judge,  but  of  an  advocate;  often  of  an  advocate  in 
an  unsound  cause.  Yet,  in  the  very  act  of  misrepresenting 
the  laws  of  composition,  he  shows  how  well  he  understands 
^hem.  But  he  was  perpetually  acting  against  his  better 
knowledge.  His  sins  were  sins  against  light.  He  trusted 
that  what  was  bad  would  be  pardoned  for  the  sake  of  what 
was  good.  What  was  good,  he  took  no  pains  to  make  better 
He  was  not,  like  most  persons  who  rise  to  eminence,  dis- 
satisfied even  with  his  best  productions.  He  had  set  up  no 
unattainable  standard  of  perfection,  the  contemplation  of 
which  might  at  once  improve  and  mortify  him.  His  path 
was  not  attended  by  an  unapproachable  mirage  of  excel- 
lence, for  ever  receding  and  for  ever  pursued.  He  was  not 
disgusted  by  the  negligence  of  others,  and  he  extended  the 


DRYDEN.  141 

same  toleration  to  himself.  His  mind  was  of  a  slovenly 
character — fond  of  splendour,  but  indifferent  to  neatness. 
Hence  most  of  his  writings  exhibit  the  sluttish  magnificence 
of  a  Russian  noble,  all  vermin  and  diamonds,  dirty  linen 
and  inestimable  sables.  Those  faults  which  spring  from 
affectation,  time  and  thought  in  a  great  measure  removed 
Trom  his  poems.  But  his  carelessness  he  retained  to  the 
last.  If  towards  the  close  of  his  life  he  less  frequently  went 
wrong  from  negligence,  it  was  only  because  long  habits  of 
composition  rendered  it  more  easy  to  go  right.  In  his  best 
pieces,  we  find  false  rhymes — triplets,  in  which  the  third 
line  appears  to  be  a  mere  intruder,  and,  while  it  breaks  the 
music,  adds  nothing  to  the  meaning — gigantic  Alexan- 
drines of  fourteen  and  sixteen  syllables,  and  truncated  verses 
for  which  he  never  troubled  himself  to  find  a  termination  or 
a  partner. 

Such  are  the  beauties  and  the  faults  which  may  be  found 
in  profusion  throughout  the  later  works  of  Dryden.  A  more 
just  and  complete  estimate  of  his  natural  and  acquired 
powers,  of  the  merits  of  his  style  and  of  its  blemishes, 
may  be  formed  from  the  Hind  and  Panther,  than  from  any 
of  his  other  writings.  As  a  didatic  poem,  it  is  far  superior 
to  the  Religio  Laici.  The  satirical  parts,  particularly  the 
character  of  Burnet,  are  scarcely  inferior  to  the  best  pass- 
ages in  Absalom  and  Achitophel.  There  are,  moreover, 
occasional  touches  of  a  tenderness  which  affects  us  more, 
because  it  is  decent,  rational,  and  manly,  and  reminds  us  of 
the  best  scenes  in  his  tragedies.  His  versification  sinks  and 
swells  in  happy  unison  with  the  subject;  and  his  wealth  of 
language  seems  to  be  unlimited.  Yet  the  carelessness  with 
which  he  has  constructed  his  plot,  and  the  innumerable  in- 
consistencies into  which  he  is  every  moment  falling,  detract 
much  from  the  pleasure  which  such  varied  excellence 
affords. 

In  Absalom  and  Achitophel  he  hit  upon  a  new  and  rich 
vein,  which  he  worked  with  signal  success.  The  ancient 
satirists  were  the  subjects  of  a  despotic  government.  They 
were  compelled  to  abstain  from  political  topics,  and  to  con- 
fine their  attention  to  the  frailties  of  private  life.  They 
might,  indeed,  sometimes  venture  to  take  liberties  with 
public  men, 


142         macatjlay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

*'  Quorum  Flaminia  tegitur  cinis  atque  Latina," 

Thus  Juvenal  immortalized  the  obsequious  senators,  who 
met  to  decide  the  fate  of  the  memorable  turbot.  His  fourth 
satire  frequently  reminds  us  of  the  great  political  poem  of 
Dryden ;  but  it  was  not  written  till  Domitian  had  fallen, 
and  it  wants  something  of  the  peculiar  favour  which  belongs 
to  contemporary  invective  alone.  His  anger  has  stood  so 
long,  that,  though  the  body  is  not  impaired,  the  efferves- 
cence, the  first  cream,  is  gone.  Boileau  lay  under  similar 
restraints,  and,  if  he  had  been  free  from  all  restraint,  would 
have  been  no  match  for  our  countryman. 

The  advantages  which  Dryden  derived  from  the  nature  of 
his  subject,  he  improved  to  the  very  utmost.  His  manner  is 
almost  perfect.  The  style  of  Horace  and  Boileau  is  fit  only 
for  light  subjects.  The  Frenchman  did  indeed  attempt  to 
turn  the  theological  reasonings  of  the  Provincial  Letters  into 
verse,  but  with  very  indifferent  success.  The  glitter  of  Pope 
is  cold.  The  ardour  of  Persius  is  without  brilliancy.  Mag- 
nificent versification  and  ingenious  combinations  rarely  har- 
monize with  the  expression  of  deep  feeling.  In  Juvenal  and 
Dryden  alone  we  have  the  sparkle  and  the  heat  together. 
Those  great  satirists  succeeded  in  communicating  the  fervour 
of  their  feelings  to  materials  the  most  incombustible,  and 
kindled  the  whole  mass  into  a  blaze,  at  once  dazzling  and 
destructive.  We  cannot,  indeed,  think,  without  regret,  of 
the  part  which  so  eminent  a  writer  as  Dryden  took  in  the 
disputes  of  that  period.  There  was,  no  doubt,  madness  and 
wickedness  on  both  sides.  But  there  was  liberty  on  the  one, 
and  despotism  on  the  other.  On  this  point,  however,  we  will 
not  dwell.  At  Talavera,  the  English  and  French  troops  for  a 
moment  suspended  their  conflict,  to  drink  of  a  stream  which 
flowed  between  them.  The  shells  were  passed  across  from 
enemy  to  enemy  without  apprehension  or  molestation.  TVe, 
in  the  same  manner,  would  rather  assist  our  political  adver- 
saries to  drink  with  us  of  that  fountain  of  intellectual  pleas- 
ure, which  should  be  the  common  refreshment  of  both  par- 
ties, than  disturb  and  pollute  it  with  the  havoc  of  unseasona- 
ble hostilities.  ' 

Macflecnoe  is  inferior  to  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  only 
m  the  subject.     In  the  execution  it  is  even  superior.     But 


DRYDEN.  143 

the  greatest  work  of  Dryden  was  the  last,  the  Ode  on  Saint 
Cecilia's  day.  It  is  the  masterpiece  of  the  second  class  of 
poetry,  and  ranks  but  just  below  the  great  models  of  the 
first.     It  reminds  us  of  the  Pedasus  of  Achilles, 

Of,  Kai  ^vr]Tog  cdv,  £tt£^'  iTnroig  a^avaroiai. 

By  comparing  it  with  the  impotent  ravings  of  the  heroic 
tragedies,  we  may  measure  the  progress  which  the  mind  of 
Dryden  had  made.  He  had  learned  to  avoid  a  too  audacious 
competition  with  higher  natures,  to  keep  at  a  distance  from 
the  verge  of  bombast  or  nonsense,  to  venture  on  no  expres- 
sion which  did  not  convey  a  distinct  idea  to  his  own  mind. 
There  is  none  of  that  "  darkness  visible"  of  style  which  he 
had  formerly  affected,  and  in  which  the  greatest  poets  only 
can  succeed.  Every  thing  is  definite,  significant,  and  pic- 
turesque. His  early  writings  resembled  the  gigantic  works 
of  those  Chinese  gardeners  who  attempt  to  rival  nature  her- 
self, to  form  cataracts  of  terrific  height  and  sound,  to  raise 
precipitous  ridges  of  mountains,  and  to  imitate  in  artificial 
plantations  the  vastness  and  the  gloom  of  some  primeval 
forest.  This  manner  he  abandoned ;  nor  did  he  ever  adopt 
the  Dutch  taste  which  Pope  affected,  the  trim  parterres,  and 
the  rectangular  walks.  He  rather  resembled  our  Kents  and 
Browns,  who,  imitating  the  great  features  of  landscape  with- 
out emulating  them,  consulting  the  genius  of  the  place,  assist- 
ing nature  and  carefully  disguising  their  art,  produced,  not 
a  Chamouni  nor  a  Niagara,  but  a  Stowe  or  a  Hagley. 

We  are,  on  the  whole,  inclined  to  regret  that  Dryden  did 
not  accomplish  his  purpose  of  writing  an  epic  poem.  It 
certainly  would  not  have  been  a  work  of  the  highest  rank. 
It  would  not  have  rivalled  the  Iliad,  the  Odyssey,  or  the 
Paradise  Lost ;  but  it  would  have  been  superior  to  the  pro- 
ductions of  Apollonius,  Lucan,  or  Statins,  and  not  inferior 
to  the  Jerusalem  Delivered.  It  would  probably  have  been  a 
vigorous  narrative,  animated  with  something  of  the  spirit  of 
the  old  romances,  enriched  with  much  splendid  description, 
and  interspersed  with  fine  declamations  and  disquisitions. 
The  danger  of  Dryden  would  have  been  from  aiming  too 
high ;  from  dwelling  too  much,  for  example,  on  his  angel8 
of  kingdoms,  and  attempting  a  competition  with  that  great 


144  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

writer,  who  in  his  own  time  had  so  incomparably  succeeded 
in  representing  to  us  the  sights  and  sounds  of  another  world. 
To  Milton,  and  to  Milton  alone  belonged  the  secrets  of  the 
great  deep,  the  beach  of  sulphur,  the  ocean  of  fire ;  the  pa- 
laces of  the  fallen  dominations,  glimmering  through  the  ever- 
lasting shade,  the  silent  wilderness  of  verdure  and  fragrance 
where  armed  angels  kept  watch  over  the  sleep  of  the  first 
lovers,  the  portico  of  diamond,  the  sea  of  jasper,  the  sap- 
phire pavement  empurpled  with  celestial  roses,  and  the  in- 
finite ranks  of  the  Cherubim,  blazing  with  adamant  and 
gold.  The  council,  the  tournament,  the  procession,  the 
crowded  cathedral,  the  camp,  the  guard-room,  the  chaise, 
were  the  proper  scenes  for  Dryden. 

But  we  have  not  space  to  pass  in  review  all  the  works 
which  Dryden  wrote.  We,  therefore,  will  not  speculate 
longer  on  those  which  he  might  possibly  have  written.  He 
may,  on  the  whole,  be  pronounced  to  have  been  a  man  pos- 
sessed of  splendid  talents,  which  he  often  abused,  and  of  a 
sound  judgment,  the  admonitions  of  which  he  often  neglect- 
ed ;  a  man  who  succeeded  only  in  an  inferior  department 
of  his  art,  but  who,  in  that  department,  succeeded  pre-emi- 
nently ;  and  who,  with  a  more  independent  spirit,  a  more 
anxious  desire  of  excellence,  and  more  respect  for  himself, 
would,  in  his  own  walk,  have  attained  to  absolute  per- 
fection. 


[^Edinburgli  Revieiv.] 

To   write    history   respectably — that    is,    to    abbreviate) 
despatches,  and  make  extracts  from  speeches,  to  intersperse  \ 
in  due  proportion  epithets  of  praise  and  abhorrence,  to  draw   I 
up  antithetical  characters  of  great  men,  setting  forth  how   | 
many   contradictory  virtues   and    vices    they  united,    and 
abounding  in  icitJis  and  icithouts ;    all  this  is  very   easy.  \.^ 
But  to  be  a  really  great  historian  is  perhaps  the  rarest  of)j) 
intellectual    distinctions.      Many    scientific  works   are,   in 
their  kind,  absolutely  perfect.     There  are  poems  which  we 
should  be  inclined  to  designate  as  faultless,  or  as  disfigured 
only  by  blemishes  which  pass  unnoticed  in  the  general  blaze 
of   excellence.       There    are    speeches,    some    speeches    of 
Demosthenes  particularly,  in  which  it  would  be  impossible 
to  alter  a  word,  without  altering  it  for  the  worse.     But  we 
are  acquainted  with  no  history  which  approaches  to  our  no- 
tion of  what  a  history  ought  to  be ;  with  no  history  which 
does  not  widely  depart,  either  on  the  right  hand  or  on  the 
left,  from  the  exact  line. 

The  cause  may  easily  be  assigned.  This  province  of 
literature  is  a  debatable  land  It  lies  on  the  confines  of 
two  distinct  territories.  It  is  under  the  jurisdiction  of  two 
hostile  powers ;  and,  like  other  districts  similarly  situated, 
it  is  ill  defined,  ill  cultivated,  and  ill  regulated.  Instead  of 
being  equally  shared  between  its  two  rulers,  the  Reason 
and  the  Imagination,  it  falls  alternately  under  the  sole  and 
absolute  dominion  of  each.  It  is  sometimes  fiction.  It  is 
sometimes  theory.    , 

*  The  Romance  of  History.  England.  By  Henry  Neele.  Lon- 
don, 1828. 

Vol.  I.-13  14^ 


146         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

History,  it  has  been  said^  is  philosophy  teaching  by  ex- 
amples. Unhappily,  what  the  philosophy  gains  in  sound- 
ness and  depth,  the  examples  generally  lose  in  vividness. 
A  perfect  historian  must  possess  an  imagination  sufficiently 
powerful  to  make  his  narrative  affecting  and  picturesque. 
Yet  he  must  control  it  so  absolutely  as  to  content  himself 
with  the  materials  which  he  finds,  and  to  refrain  from  sup- 
plying deficiencies  by  additions  of  his  own.  He  must  be  a 
profound  and  ingenious  reasoner.  Yet  he  must  possess 
sufficient  self-command  to  abstain  from  casting  his  facts  in 
the  mould  of  his  hypothesis.  Those  who  can  justly  esti- 
mate these  almost  insuperable  difficulties  will  not  think  it 
strange  that  every  writer  should  have  failed,  either  in  the 
narrative  or  in  the  speculative  department  of  history. 

It  may  be  laid  down  as  a  general  rule,  though  subject  to 
considerable  qualifications  and  exceptions,  that  history  be- 
gins in  Novel  and  ends  in  Essay.  Of  the  romantic  historians, 
Herodotus  is  the  earliest  and  the  best.  His  animation,  his 
simple-hearted  tenderness,  his  wonderful  talent  for  descrip- 
tion and  dialogue,  and  the  pure  sweet  flow  of  his  language, 
place  him  at  the  head  of  narrators.  He  reminds  us  of  a 
delightful  child.  There  is  a  grace  beyond  the  reach  of 
affi3ctation  in  his  awkwardness,  a  malice  in  his  innocence, 
an  intelligence  in  his  nonsense,  an  insinuating  eloquence  in 
his  lisp.  We  know  of  no  writer  who  makes  such  interest 
for  himself  and  his  book  in  the  heart  of  the  reader.  At  the 
distance  of  three-and-twenty  centuries,  we  feel  for  him  the 
same  sort  of  pitying  fondness  which  Fontaine  and  Gay  are 
said  to  have  inspired  in  society.  He  has  written  an  incom- 
parable book.  He  has  written  something  better  perhaps 
than  the  best  history ;  but  he  has  not  written  a  good  history ; 
he  is,  from  the  first  to  the  last  chapter,  an  inventor.  We 
do  not  here  refer  merely  to  those  gross  fictions  with  which 
he  has  Ibeen  reproached  by  the  critics  of  later  times.  We 
speak  of  that  colouring  which  is  equally  difi"used  over  his 
whole  narrative,  and  which  perpetually  leaves  the  most  sa- 
gacious reader  in  doubt  what  to  reject  and  what  to  receive. 
The  most  authentic  parts  of  his  work  bear  the  same  relation 
to  his  wildest  legends,  which  Henry  the  Fifth  bears  to  the 
Tempest.  There  was  an  expedition  undertaken  by  Xerxes 
against   Greece;    and   there  was  an  invasion  of  France 


HISTORY.  147 

There  was  a  battle  at  Platsea;  and  there  was  a  battle  at 
Agincourt,  Cambridge  and  Exeter,  the  Constable  and  the 
Dauphin,  were  persons  as  real  as  Demaratus  and  Pausanias. 
The  harangue  of  the  archbishop  on  the  Salic  Law  and  the 
Book  of  Numbers  differs  much  less  from  the  orations  which 
have  in  all  ages  proceeded  from  the  right  reverend  bench, 
than  the  speeches  of  Mardonius  and  Artabanus,  from  those 
which  were  delivered  at  the  council-board  of  Susa.  Shak- 
speare  gives  us  enumerations  of  armies,  and  returns  of  killed 
and  wounded,  which  are  not,  we  suspect,  much  less  accurate 
than  those  of  Herodotus.  There  are  passages  in  Herodotus 
nearly  as  long  as  acts  of  Shakspeare,  in  which  every  thing 
is  told  dramatically,  and  in  which  the  narrative  serves  only 
the  purpose  of  stage-directions.  It  is  possible,  no  doubt, 
that  the  substance  of  some  real  conversations  may  have  been 
reported  to  the  historian.  But  events  which,  if  they  ever 
happened,  happened  in  ages  and  nations  so  remote  that  the 
particulars  could  never  have  been  known  to  him,  are  related 
with  the  greatest  minuteness  of  detail.  We  have  all  that 
Candaules  said  to  Gyges,  and  all  that  passed  between  Asty- 
ages  and  Harpagus.  We  are,  therefore,  unable  to  judge 
whether,  in  the  account  which  he  gives  of  transactions  re- 
specting which  he  might  possibly  have  been  well  informed, 
we  can  trust  to  any  thing  beyond  the  naked  outline ;  whether, 
for  example,  the  answer  of  Grelon  to  the  ambassadors  of  the 
Grecian  confederacy,  or  the  expressions  which  passed  be- 
tween Aristides  and  Themistocles  at  their  famous  interview, 
have  been  correctly  transmitted  to  us.  The  great  events 
are,  no  doubt,  faithfully  related.  So  probably,  are  many  of 
the  slighter  circumstances;  but  which  of  them,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  ascertain.  The  fictions  are  so  .  much  like  the  facts, 
and  the  facts  so  much  like  the  fictions,  that,  with  respect  to 
many  most  interesting  particulars,  our  belief  is  neither  given 
nor  withheld,  but  remains  in  an  uneasy  and  interminable 
state  of  abeyance.  We  know  that  there  is  truth,  but  we 
cannot  exactly  decide  where  it  lies. 

The  faults  of  Herodotus  are  the  faults  of  a  simple  and 
imaginative  mind.  Children  and  servants  are  remarkably 
Herodotean  in  their  style  of  narration.  They  tell  every 
thing  dramatically.  Their  says  lies  and  says  shes  are  pro- 
verbial.    Every  person  who  has  had  to  settle  their  disputes 


148  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

knows  that,  even  when  they  have  no  intention  to  deceive, 
their  reports  of  conversations  always  require  to  be  carefully 
sifted.  If  an  educated  man  were  giving  an  account  of  the 
late  change  of  administration,  he  would  say,  "  Lord  Goderich 
resigned;  and  the  king  in  consequence  sent  for  the  Duke 
of  Wellington/^  A  porter  tells  the  story  as  if  he  had  been 
hid  behind  the  curtains  of  the  royal  bed  at  AVindsor.  '^  So 
Lord  Goderich  says,  'I  cannot  manage  this  business;  I  must 
go  out/  So  the  the  king  says,  says  he,  '  Well,  then,  I  must 
send  for  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  that's  all/''  This  is  the 
very  manner  of  the  father  of  history. 

Herodotus  wrote  as  it  was  natural  that  he  should  write. 
He  wrote  for  a  nation  susceptible,  curious,  lively,  insatiably 
desirous  of  novelty  and  excitement ;  for  a  nation  in  which 
the  fine  arts  had  attained  their  highest  excellence,  but  in 
which  philosophy  was  still  in  its  infancy.  His  countrymen 
had  but  recently  begun  to  cultivate  prose  composition.  Public 
transactions  had  generally  been  recorded  in  verse.  The  first \ 
historians  might  therefore  indulge,  without  fear  of  censure,  j 
in  the  license  allowed  to  their  predecessors  the  bards.  Books/ 
were  few.  The  events  of  former  times  were  learned  from 
tradition  and  from  popular  ballads ;  the  manners  of  foreign 
countries  from  the  reports  of  travellers.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  mystery  which  overhangs  what  is  distant,  either  in 
space  or  time,  frequently  prevents  us  from  censuring  as  un- 
natural what  we  perceive  to  be  impossible.  We  stare  at  a 
dragoon  who  has  killed  three  French  cuirassiers  as  a  pro- 
digy; yet  we  read,  without  the  least  disgust,  how  Godfrey 
slew  his  thousands,  and  Rinaldo  his  ten  thousands.  Within 
the  last  hundred  years,  stories  about  China  and  Bantam, 
which  ought  not  to  have  imposed  on  an  old  nurse,  were 
gravely  laid  down  as  foundations  of  political  theories  by  emi- 
nent philosophers.  What  the  time  of  the  Crusades  is  to  us, 
the  generation  of  Croesus  and  Solon  was  to  the  Greeks  of 
the  time  of  Herodotus.  Babylon  was  to  them  what  Pekin 
was  to  the  French  academicians  of  the  last  century. 

For  such  a  people  was  the  book  of  Herodotus  composed ; 
and  if  we  may  trust  to  a  report,  not  sanctioned,  indeed,  by 
writers  of  high  authority,  but  in  itself  not  improbable,  it  was 
composed  not  to  be  read,  but  to  be  heard.  It  was  not  to  the 
kIow  circulation  of  a  few  copies,  which  the  rich  only  could 


HISTORY.  X49 

possess,  that  the  aspiring  author  looked  for  his  reward.  The 
great  Olympian  festival — the  solemnity  which  collected 
multitudes,  proud  of  the  Grecian  name,  from  the  mldest 
mountains  of  Doris  and  the  remotest  colonics  of  Italy  and 
Libya— -was  to  witness  his  triumph.  The  interest  of  the 
narrative  and  the  beauty  of  the  style  were  aided  by  the 
imposing  effect  of  recitation — by  the  splendour  of  the  spec- 
tacle— by  the  powerful  influence  of  sympathy.  A  critic 
who  could  have  asked  for  authorities  in  the  midst  of  such 
a  scene  must  have  been  of  a  cold  and  skeptical  nature,  and 
few  such  critics  were  there.  As  was  the  historian,  such 
were  the  auditors — inquisitive,  credulous,  easily  moved  by 
religious  awe  or  patriotic  enthusiasm.  They  were  the  very 
men  to  hear  with  delight  of  strange  beasts,  and  birds,  and 
trees;  of  dwarfs,  and  giants,  and  cannibals;  of  gods  whose 
very  name  it  was  impiety  to  utter;  of  ancient  dynasties 
which  had  left  behind  them  monuments  surpassing  all  the 
works  of  later  times;  of  towns  like  provinces;  of  rivers  like 
seas;  of  stupendous  walls,  and  temples,  and  pyramids;  of 
the  rites  which  the  Magi  performed  at  daybreak  on  the 
tops  of  the  mountains;  of  the  secrets  inscribed  on  the  eter- 
nal obelisks  of  Memphis.  With  equal  delight  they  would 
have  listened  to  the  graceful  romances  of  their  own  country. 
They  now  heard  of  the  exact  accomplishment  of  obscure 
predictions;  of  the  punishment  of  crimes  over  which  the 
justice  of  Heaven  had  seemed  to  slumber;  of  dreams,  omens, 
warnings  from  the  dead;  of  princesses  for  whom  noble 
suitors_  contended  in  every  generous  exercise  of  strength 
and  skill;  of  infants  strangely  preserved  from  the  dagger 
of  the  assassin  to  fulfil  high  destinies. 

As  the  narrative  approached  their  own  times,  the  interest 
became  still  more  absorbing.  The  chronicler  had  now  to 
tell  the  story  of  that  great  conflict  from  which  Europe  dates 
its  intellectual  and  political  supremacy — a  story  which, 
even  at  this  distance  of  time,  is  the  most  marvellous  and 
the  most  touching  in  the  annals  of  the  human  race — a  story 
abounding  in^  all  that  is  wild  and  wonderful,  with  all 
that  is  pathetic  and  animating;  with  the  gigantic  caprices 
of  infinite  wealth  and  despotic  power ;  with  the  mightier 
miracles  of  wisdom,  of  virtue,  and  of  courage.  He  told 
them  of  rivers  dried  up  in  a  day,  of  provinces  famished  for 


13* 


160         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

a  meal ;  of  a  passage  for  ships  hewn  through  the  mountains; 
of  a  road  for  armies  spread  upon  the  waves ;  of  monarchies 
and  commonwealths  swept  away;  of  anxiety,  of  terror,  of 
confusion,  of  despair ! — and  then  of  proud  and  stubborn 
hearts  tried  in  that  extremity  of  evil  and  not  found  wanting ; 
of  resistance  long  maintained  against  desperate  odds ;  of 
lives  dearly  sold  when  resistance  could  be  maintained  no 
more;  of  signal  deliverance,  and  of  unsparing  revenge. 
Whatever  gave  a  stronger  air  of  reality  to  a  narrative  so 
well  calculated  to  inflame  the  passions  and  to  flatter  national 
pride  was  certain  to  be  favourably  received. 

Between  the  time  at  which  Herodotus  is  said  to  have  com- 
posed his  history,  and  the  close  of  the  Peloponnesian  war, 
about  forty  years  elapsed — forty  years,  crowded  with  great 
military  and  political  events.  The  circumstances  of  that 
period  produced  a  great  efiect  on  the  Grecian  character; 
and  nowhere  was  this  efi'ect  so  remarkable  as  in  the  illus- 
trious democracy  of  Athens.  An  Athenian,  indeed,  even 
in  the  time  of  Herodotus,  would  scarcely  have  written  a 
book  so  romantic  and  garrulous  as  that  of  Herodotus.  As 
civilization  advanced,  the  citizens  of  that  famous  republic 
became  still  less  visionary,  and  still  less  simple-hearted. 
They  aspired  to  know,  where  their  ancestors  had  been  con- 
tent to  doubt ;  they  began  to  doubt,  where  their  ancestors 
had  thought  it  their  duty  to  believe.  Aristophanes  is  fond 
of  alluding  to  this  change  in  the  temper  of  his  countrymen. 
The  father  and  son,  in  the  Clouds,  are  evidently  representa- 
tives of  the  generations  to  which  they  respectively  belonged. 
Nothing  more  clearly  illustrates  the  nature  of  this  moral 
revolution,  than  the  change  which  passed  upon  tragedy. 
The  wild  sublimity  of  ^sehylus  became  the  scofi"  of  every 
young  Phidippides.  Lectures  on  abstruse  points  of  phi- 
losophy, the  fine  distinctions  of  casuistry,  and  the  dazzling 
fence  of  rhetoric,  were  substituted  for  poetry.  The  lan- 
guage lost  something  of  that  infantine  sweetness  which  had 
characterized  it.  It  became  less  like  the  ancient  Tuscan, 
and  more  like  the  modern  French. 

The  fashionable  logic  of  the  Greeks  was,  indeed,  far 
from  strict.  Logic  never  can  be  strict  where  books  are 
scarce,  and  where  information  is  conveyed  orally.  We  are 
all  aware  how  frequently  fallacies,  which,  when  set  down 


HISTORY.  151 

on  paper,  are  at  once  detected,  pass  for  unanswerable  argu-  "A 
mentj^,  when  dexterously  and  volubly  urged  in  parliament,  - 
at  the  bar,  or  in  private  conversation.  The  reason  is  evident. 
\Ye  cannot  inspect  them  closely  enough  to  perceive  their 
inaccuracy.  We  cannot  readily  compare  them  with  each 
other.  We  lose  sight  of  one  part  of  the  subject,  before 
another,  which  ought  to  be  received  in  connection  with  it, 
comes  before  us;  and  as  there  is  no  immutable  record  of 
what  has  been  admitted,  and  of  what  has  been  denied,  direct 
contradictions  pass  muster  with  little  difficulty.  Almost  all  ^ 
the  education  of  a  Grreek  consisted  in  talking  and  listening.  / 
His  opinions  on  governments  were  picked  up  in  the  debates 
of  the  assembly.  If  he  wished  to  study  metaphysics,  instead 
of  shutting  himself  up  with  a  book,  he  walked  down  to  the 
market-place  to  look  for  a  sophist.  So  completely  were 
men  formed  to  these  habits,  that  even  writing  acquired  a 
conversational  air.  The  philosophers  adopted  the  form  of 
dialogue,  as  the  most  natural  mode  of  communicating  know- 
ledge. Their  reasonings  have  the  merits  and  the  defects 
which  belong  to  that  species  of  composition;  and  are  cha- 
racterized rather  by  quickness  and  subtilty  than  by  depth 
and  precision.  Truth  is  exhibited  in  parts,  and  by  glimpses. 
Innumerable  clever  hints  are  given ;  but  no  sound  and  dura- 
ble system  is  erected.  The  argumentum  ad  hominem, 
a  kind  of  argument  most  efficacious  in  debate,  but  utterly 
useless  for  the  investigation  of  general  principles,  is  among 
their  favourite  resources.  Hence,  though  nothing  can  be 
more  admirable  than  the  skill  which  Socrates  displays  in 
the  conversations  which  Plato  has  reported  or  invented,  his 
victories,  for  the  most  part,  seem  to  us  unprofitable.  A 
trophy  is  set  up;  but  no  new  province  is  added  to  the  do- 
minions of  the  human  mind. 

Still,  where  thousands  of  keen  and  ready  intellects  were 
constantly  employed  in  speculating  on  the  qualities  of  ac- 
tions, and  on  the  principles  of  government,  it  was  impossible 
that  history  should  retain  its  old  character.  It  became  less 
gossiping  and  less  picturesque;  but  much  more  accurate, 
and  somewhat  more  scientific. 

The  history  of  Thucydides  differs  from  that  of  Herodotus 
as  a  portrait  differs  from  the  representation  of  an  imaginary 
scene;  as  the  Burke  or  Fox  of  Reynolds  differs  from  his 


152         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Ugolino  or  his  Beaufort.  In  the  former  case,  the  archetype 
is  given :  in  the  latter  it  is  created.  The  faculties  which 
are  required  for  the  latter  purpose  are  of  a  higher  and  rarer 
order  than  those  which  suffice  for  the  former,  and  indeed 
necessarily  comprise  them.  He  who  is  able  to  paint  what 
he  sees  with  the  eye  of  the  mind,  will  surely  be  able  to 
paint  what  he  sees  with  the  eye  of  the  body.  ^  He  who  can 
invent  a  story  and  tell  it  well,  will  also  be  able  to  tell  in  an 
interesting  manner  a  story  which  he  has  not  invented.  If, 
in  practice,  some  of  the  best  writers  of  fiction  have  been 
among  the  worst  writers  of  history,  it  has  been  because  one 
of  their  talents  had  merged  in  another  so  completely,  that 
it  could  not  be  severed ;  because,  having  long  been  habitu- 
ated to  invent  and  narrate  at  the  same  time,  they  found  it 
impossible  to  narrate  without  inventing. 

Some  capricious  and  discontented  artists  have  affected  to 
consider  portrait-painting  as  unworthy  of  a  man  of  genius. 
Some  critics  have  spoken  in  the  same  contemptuous  manner 
of  history.  Johnson  puts  the  case  thus : — The  historian  tells 
either  what  is  false  or  what  is  true.  In  the  former  case  he 
is  no  historian.  In  the  latter,  he  has  no  opportunity  for 
displaying  his  abilities.  For  truth  is  one  :  and  all  who  tell 
the  truth  must  tell  it  alike. 

It  is  not  difficult  to  elude  both  the  horns  of  this  dilemma. 
We  will  recur  to  the  analogous  art  of  portrait-painting.  Any 
man  with  eyes  and  hands  may  be  taught  to  take  a  likeness. 
The  process,  up  to  a  certain  point,  is  merely  mechanical. 
If  this  were  all,  a  man  of  talents  might  justly  despise  the 
occupation.  But  we  could  mention  portraits  which  are  re- 
semblances, but  not  mere  resemblances;  faithful,  but  much 
more  than  faithful ;  portraits  which  condense  into  one  point 
of  time,  and  exhibit,  at  a  single  glance,  the  whole  history 
of  turbid  and  eventful  lives — in  which  the  eye  seems  to 
scrutinize  us,  and  the  mouth  to  command  us — in  which 
the  brow  menaces,  and  the  lip  almost  quivers  with  scorn — 
in  which  every  wrinkle  is  a  comment  on  some  important 
transaction.  The  account  which  Thucydides  has  given  of 
the  retreat  from  Syracuse  is,  among  narratives,  what  Van- 
dyck's  Lord  Strafford  is  among  paintings. 

Diversity,  it  is  said,  implies  error;  truth  is  one,  and 
admits  of  no  degree.     We  answer,  that  this  principle  holds 


HISTORY.  163 

good  only  in  abstract  reasonings.  "When  we  talk  of  the 
truth  of  imitation  in  the  fine  arts,  we  mean  an  imperfect  and 
a  graduated  truth.  No  picture  is  exactly  like  the  original : 
Dor  is  a  picture  good  in  proportion  as  it  is  like  the  original. 
When  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence  paints  a  handsome  peeress,  he 
does  not  contemplate  her  through  a  powerful  microscope, 
and  transfer  to  the  canvas  the  pores  of  the  skin,  the  blood- 
vessels of  the  eye,  and  all  the  other  beauties  which  Gulliver 
discovered  in  the  Brobdignaggian  maids  of  honour.  If  he 
were  to  do  this,  the  effect  would  not  merely  be  unpleasant, 
but  unless  the  scale  of  the  picture  were  proportionably  en- 
larged, would  be  Sibsolutelj  false.  And,  after  all,  a  micro- 
scope of  greater  power  than  that  which  he  had  employed, 
would  convict  him  of  innumerable  omissions.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  history.  Perfectly  and  absolutely  true,  it 
cannot  be  ;  for,  to  be  perfectly  and  absolutely  true,  it  ought 
to  record  all  the  slightest  particulars  of  the  slightest  trans- 
actions— all  the  things  done,  and  all  the  words  uttered,  dur- 
ing the  time  of  which  it  treats.  The  omission  of  any  cir- 
cumstance, however  insignificant,  would  be  a  defect.  If 
history  were  written  thus,  the  Bodleian  library  would  not 
contain  the  occurrences  of  a  week.  What  is  told  in  the 
fullest  and  most  accurate  annals  bears  an  infinitely  small 
proportion  to  what  is  suppressed.  The  difference  between 
the  copious  work  of  Clarendon,  and  the  account  of  the  civil 
wars  in  the  abridgment  of  Goldsmith,  vanishes,  when  com- 
pared with  the  immense  mass  of  facts  respecting  which  both 
are  equally  silent. 

Xo  picture,  then,  and  no  history,  can  present  us  with  the 
whole  truth  :  but  those  are  the  best  pictures  and  the  best 
histories  which  exhibit  such  parts  of  the  truth  as  most  nearly 
produce  the  effect  of  the  whole.  He  who  is  deficient  in  the 
art  of  selection  may,  by  showing  nothing  but  the  truth,  pro- 
duce all  the  effect  of  the  grossest  falsehood.  It  perpetually 
happens  that  one  writer  tells  less  truth  than  another,  merely 
because  he  tells  more  truths.  In  the  imitative  arts  we  con- 
stantly see  this.  There  are  lines  in  the  human  face,  and" 
objects  in  landscape,  which  stand  in  such  relations  to  each 
other,  that  they  ought  either  to  be  all  introduced  into  a 
painting  together,  or  all  omitted  together.  A  sketch  into 
which  none  of  them  enters  may  be  excellent ;  but  if  some 


1.54  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

are  given  and  others  left  out,  though  there  are  more  pointa 
of  likeness,  there  is  less  likeness.  An  outline  scrawled  with 
a  pen,  which  seizes  the  marked  features  of  a  countenance, 
will  give  a  much  stronger  idea  of  it  than  a  bad  painting  in 
oils.  Yet  the  worst  painting  in  oils  that  ever  hung  in  So- 
merset House  resembles  the  original  in  many  more  particu- 
lars. A  bust  of  white  marble  may  give  an  excellent  idea  of 
a  blooming  face.  Colour  the  lips  and  cheeks  of  the  bust, 
leaving  the  hair  and  eyes  unaltered,  and  the  similarity,  in- 
stead of  being  more  striking,  will  be  less  so. 

History  has  its  foreground  and  its  background :  and  it  is 
principally  in  the  management  of  its  perspective  that  one 
artist  diiiers  from  another.  Some  events  must  be  repre- 
sented on  a  large  scale,  others  diminished;  the  great  majo- 
rity will  be  lost  in  the  dimness  of  the  horizon :  and  a  general 
idea  of  their  joint  effect  will  be  given  by  a  few  slight  touches. 

In  this  respect,  no  writer  has  ever  equalled  Thucydides. 
He  was  a  perfect  master  of  the  art  of  gradual  diminution. 
His  history  is  sometimes  as  concise  as  a  chronological  chart; 
yet  it  is  always  perspicuous.  It  is  sometimes  as  minute  as 
one  of  Lovelace's  letters;  yet  it  is  never  prolix.  He  never 
fails  to  contract  and  to  expand  it  in  the  right  place. 

Thucydides  borrowed  from  Herodotus  the  practice  of  put- 
ting speeches  of  his  own  into  the  mouths  of  his  characters. 
In  Herodotus,  this  usage  is  scarcely  censurable.  It  is  of  a 
piece  with  his  whole  manner.  But  it  is  altogether  incongru- 
ous in  the  work  of  his  successor;  and  violates,  not  only  the 
accuracy  of  history,  but  the  decencies  of  fiction.  When 
once  we  enter  into  the  spirit  of  Herodotus,  we  find  no  in- 
consistency. The  CQjaventional  probability  of  his  drama  is 
preserved  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  The  deliberate 
orations  and  the  familiar  dialogues  are  in  strict  keeping 
with  each  other.  But  the  speeches  of  Thucydides  are  nei- 
ther preceded  nor  followed  by  any  thing  with  which  they 
harmonize.  They  give  to  the  whole  book  something  of  the 
grotesque  character  of  those  Chinese  pleasure-grounds,  in 
which  perpendicular  rocks  of  granite  start  up  in  the  midst 
of  a  soft  green  plain.  Invention  is  shocking,  where  truth 
is  in  such  close  juxtaposition  with  it. 

Thucydides  honestly  tells  us  that  some  of  these  disclosures 
ai-e  purely  fictitious.     He  may  have  reported  the  substance 


HISTORY.  155 

of  others  correctly.  But  it  is  clear,  from  the  internal  evi- 
dence, that  he  has  preserved  no  more  than  the  substance. 
His  own  peculiar  habits  of  thought  and  expression  are 
everywhere  discernible.  Individual  and  national  peculiari- 
ties are  seldom  to  be  traced  in  the  sentiments,  and  never  in 
the  diction.  The  oratory  of  the  Corinthians  and  Thebans 
is  not  less  Attic,  either  in  matter  or  in  manner,  than  that  of 
the  Athenians.  The  style  of  Cleon  is  as  pure,  as  austere, 
as  terse,  and  as  significant  as  that  of  Pericles. 

In  spite  of  this  great  fault,  it  must  be  allowed  that  Thu- 
cydides  has  surpassed  all  his  rivals  in  the  art  of  historical 
narration,  in  the  art  of  producing  an  effect  on  the  imagina- 
tion by  skilful  selection  and  disposition,  without  indulging 
in  the  license  of  invention.  But  narration,  though  an  im- 
portant part  of  the  business  of  an  historian,  is  not  the  whole. 
To  append  a  moral  to  a  work  of  fiction,  is  either  useless  or 
superfluous.  /  A  fiction  may  give  a  more  impressive  effect 
to  what  is  already  known,  but  it  can  teach  nothing  new.  If 
it  presents  to  us  characters  and  trains  of  events  to  which 
our  experience  furnishes  us  with  nothing  similar,  instead  of 
deriving  instruction  from  it,  we  pronounce  it  unnatural.  We 
do  not  form  our  opinions  from  it ;  but  we  try  it  by  our  pre- 
conceived opinions.  Fiction,  therefore,  is  essentially  imita-^ 
tive.  Its  merit  consists  in  its  resemblance  to  a  model  with 
which  we  are  already  familiar,  or  to  which  at  least  we  can 
instantly  refer.  Hence  it  is,  that  the  anecdotes,  which  inte- 
rest us  most  strongly  in  authentic  narrative,  are  offensive 
when  introduced  into  novels ;  that  what  is  called  the  ro- 
mantic part  of  history  is,  in  fact,  the  least  romantic.  It  is 
delightful  as  history,  because  it  contradicts  our  previous  no- 
tions of  human  nature,  and  of  the  connection  of  causes  and 
effects.  It  is,  on  that  very  account,  shocking  and  incongru- 
ous in  fiction.  In  fiction,  the  principles  are  given  to  find 
the  facts ;  in  history,  the  facts  are  given  to  find  the  principles; 
and  the  writer  who  does  not  explain  the  phenomena,  as  well 
as  state  them,  performs  only  one-half  of  his  oflice.  Facts 
are  the  mere  dross  of  history.  It  is  from  the  abstract  truth 
which  interpenetrates  them,  and  lies  latent  among  them,  like 
gold  in  the  ore,  that  the  mass  derives  its  whole  value ;  and 
the  precious  particles  are  generally  combined  with  the  baser 


156         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

in  such  a  manner  that  the  separation  is  a  task  of  the  utmost 
difficulty. 

Here  Thucvdides  is  deficient.  The  deficiency,  indeed,  is 
not  discreditable  to  him.  It  was  the  inevitable  effect  of 
circumstances.  It  was,  in  the  nature  of  things,  necessary 
that,  in  some  part  of  its  progress  through  political  science;, 
the  human  mind  should  reach  that  point  which  it  attained  in 
his  time.  Knowledge  advances  by  steps,  and  not  by  leaps. 
The  axioms  of  an  English  debating  club  would  have  been 
startling  and  mysterious  paradoxes  to  the  most  enlightened 
statesmen  of  Athens.  But  it  would  be  as  absurd  to  speak 
contemptuously  of  the  Athenian  on  this  account,  as  to  ridi- 
cule Strabo  for  not  having  given  us  an  account  of  Chili,  or 
to  talk  of  Ptolemy  as  we  talk  of  Sir  Richard  Phillips.  Still, 
when  we  wish  for  solid  geographical  information,  we  must 
prefer  the  solemn  coxcombry  of  Pinkerton  to  the  noble  work 
of  Strabo.  If  we  wanted  instruction  respecting  the  solar 
system,  we  should  consult  the  silliest  girl  from  a  boarding- 
school  rather  than  Ptolemy. 

Thucydides  was,  undoubtedly,  a  sagacious  and  reflecting 
man.  This  clearly  appears  from  the  ability  with  which  he 
discusses  practical  questions.  But  the  talent  of  deciding 
on  the  circumstances  of  a  particular  case  is  often  possessed 
in  the  highest  perfection  by  persons  destitute  of  the  power 
of  generalization.  Men,  skilled  in  the  military  tactics  of 
civilized  nations,  have  been  amazed  at  the  far-sightedness 
and  penetration  which  a  Mohawk  displays  in  concerting  his 
Btratagems,  or  in  discerning  those  of  his  enemies.  In  Eng- 
land, no  class  possesses  so  much  of  that  peculiar  ability 
which  is  required  for  constructing  ingenious  schemes,  and 
for  obviating  remote  difficulties,  as  the  thieves  and  the  thief- 
takers.  Women  have  more  of  this  dexterity  than  men. 
Lawyers  have  more  of  it  than  statesmen :  statesmen  have 
more  of  it  than  philosophers.  Monk  had  more  of  it  than 
Harrington  and  all  his  club.  Walpole  had  more  of  it  than 
Adam  Smith  .or  Beccaria.  Indeed,  the  species  of  discipline 
by  which  this  dexterity  is  acquired  tends  to  contract  the 
mind,  and  to  render  it  incapable  of  abstract  reasoning. 

The  G-recian  statesmen  of  the  age  of  Thucydides  were 
distinguished  by  their  practical  sagacity,  their  insight  into 
motives,  their  skill  in  devising  means  for  the  aXtainment  of 


HISTORY.  157 

their  ends.  A  state  of  society  in  which  the  rich  were  coD' 
stantly  planning  the  oppression  of  the  poor,  and  the  poor 
the  spoliation  of  the  rich,  in  which  the  ties  of  party  had  su- 
perseded those  of  country,  in  which  revolutions  and  counter- 
revolutions were  events  of  daily  occurrence,  was  naturally 
prolific  in  desperate  and  crafty  political  adventurers.  This 
was  the  very  school  in  which  men  were  likely  to  acquire 
the  dissimulation  of  Mazarine,  the  judicious  temerity  of 
Richelieu,  the  penetration,  the  exquisite  tact,  the  almost 
instinctive  presentiment  of  approaching  events,  which  gave 
so  much  authority  to  the  counsel  of  Shaftesbury,  that  '^  it 
was  as  if  a  man  had  inquired  of  the  oracle  of  God.^^  In 
this  school  Thucydides  studied;  and  his  wisdom  is  that 
which  such  a  school  would  naturally  afford.  He  judges 
better  of  circumstances  than  of  principles.  The  more  a 
question  is  narrowed,  the  better  he  reasons  upon  it.  His 
work  suggests  many  most  important  considerations  respect- 
ing the  first  principles  of  government  and  morals,  the 
growth  of  factions,  the  organization  of  armies,  and  the 
mutual  relations  of  communities.  Yet  all  his  general  ob- 
servations on  these  subjects  are  very  superficial.  His  most 
judicious  remarks  differ  from  the  remarks  of  a  really  philo- 
sophical historian,  as  a  sum  correctly  cast  up  by  a  book- 
keeper, from  a  general  expression  discovered  by  an  alge- 
braist. The  former  is  useful  only  in  a  single  transaction; 
the  latter  may  be  applied  to  an  infinite  number  of  cases. 

This  opinion  will,  we  fear,  be  considered  as  heterodox. 
For,  not  to  speak  of  the  illusion  which  the  sight  of  a  Greek 
type,  or  the  sound  of  a  Greek  diphthong,  often  produces, 
there  are  some  peculiarities  in  the  manner  of  Thucydides, 
which  in  no  small  degree  have  tended  to  secure  to  him  the 
reputation  of  profundity.  His  book  is  evidently  the  book 
of  a  man  and  a  statesman ;  and  in  this  respect  presents  a 
remarkable  contrast  to  the  delightful  childishness  of  Hero- 
dotus. Throughout  it  there  is  an  air  of  matured  power,  of 
grave  and  melancholy  reflection,  of  impartiality  and  habitual 
self-command.  His  feelings  are  rarely  indulged,  and  speedily 
repressed.  Vulgar  prejudices  of  every  kind,  and  particularly 
vulgar  superstitions,  he  treats  with  a  cold  and  sober  disdain 
peculiar  to  himself.  His  style  is  weighty,  condensed,  an- 
tithetical, and  not  unfrequ<mtly  obscure.      But  when  we 

Vol.  I.— 14 


158         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

look  at  his  political  philosophy,  without  regard  to  these 
circumstances,  we  find  him  to  have  been,  what  indeed  it 
would  have  been  a  miracle  if  he  had  not  been,  simply  an 
Athenian  of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ. 

Xenophon  is  commonly  placed,  but  we  think  without 
much  reason,  in  the  same  rank  with  Herodotus  and  Thucy- 
dides.  He  resembles  them,  indeed,  in  the  purity  and  sweet- 
ness of  his  style ;  but  in  spirit,  he  rather  resembles  that 
later  school  of  historians,  whose  works  seem  to  be  fables, 
composed  for  a  moral,  and  who,  in  their  eagerness  to  give 
us  warnings  and  example,  forget  to  give  us  men  and  women. 
The  life  of  Cyrus,  whether  we  look  upon  it  as  a  history  or 
as  a  romance,  seems  to  us  a  very  wretched  performance. 
The  Expedition  of  the  Ten  Thousand,  and  the  History  of 
Grecian  Affairs,  are  certainly  pleasant  reading;  but  they 
indicate  no  great  power  of  mind.  In  truth,  Xenophon, 
though  his  taste  was  elegant,  his  disposition  amiable,  and 
his  intercourse  with  the  world  extensive,  had,  we  suspect, 
rather  a  weak  head.  Such  was  evidently  the  opinion  of  that 
extraordinary  man  to  whom  he  early  attached  himself,  and 
for  whose  memory  he  entertained  an  idolatrous  veneration. 
He  came  in  only  for  the  milk  with  which  Socrates  nourished 
his  babes  ia  philosophy.  A  few  saws  of  morality,  and  a 
few  of  the  simplest  doctrines  of  natural  religion,  were 
enough  for  the  good  young  man.  The  strong  meat,  the 
bold  speculations  on  physical  and  metaphysical  science,  were 
reserved  for  auditors  of  a  different  description.  Even  the 
lawless  habits  of  a  captain  of  mercenary  troops  could  rot 
change  the  tendency  which  the  character  of  Xenophon  early 
acquired.  To  the  last,  he  seems  to  have  retained  a  sort  of 
heathen  puritanism.  The  sentiments  of  piety  and  virtue, 
which  abound  in  his  works,  are  those  of  a  well-meaning 
man,  somewhat  timid  and  narrow-minded,  devout  from  con- 
stitution rather  than  from  rational  conviction.  He  was  as 
superstitious  as  Herodotus,  but  in  a  way  far  more  offensive. 
The  very  peculiarities  which  charm  us  in  an  infant,  the 
toothless  mumbling,  the  stammering,  the  tottering,  the  help- 
lessness, the  causeless  tears  and  laughter,  are  disgusting  in 
old  age.  In  the  same  manner,  the  absurdity  which  pre- 
cedes a  period  of  general  intelligence  is  often  pleasing;  thai 
which  follows  it  is  contemptible.     The  nonsense  of  Hero- 


HISTORY.  159 

dotus  is  that  of  a  baby.  The  nonsense  of  Xenophon  is  that 
of  a  dotard.  His  stories  about  dreams,  omens,  and  prophe- 
cies present  a  strange  contrast  to  the  passages  in  which  the 
shrewd  and  incredulous  Thucjdides  mentions  the  popular 
superstitions.  It  is  not  quite  clear  that  Xenophon  was  honest 
in  his  credulity;  his  fanaticism  was  in  some  degree  politic. 
He  would  have  made  an  excellent  member  of  the  Apostolic 
Comarilla.  An  alarmist  by  nature,  an  aristocrat  by  party, 
he  carried  to  an  unreasonable  excess  his  horror  of  popular 
turbulence.  The  quiet  atrocity  of  Sparta  did  not  shock  him 
in  the  same  manner ;  for  he  hated  tumult  more  than  crimes. 
He  was  desirous  to  find  restraints  which  might  curb  the  pas- 
sions of  the  multitude;  and  he  absurdly  fancied  that  he  had 
found  them  in  a  religion  without  evidences  or  sanction,  pre- 
cepts or  example,  in  a  frigid  system  of  Theophilanthropy, 
supported  by  nursery  tales. 

Polybius  and  Arrian  have  given  us  authentic  accounts  of 
facts,  and  here  their  merit  ends.  They  were  not  men  of 
comprehensive  minds :  they  had  not  the  art  of  telling  a  story 
in  an  interesting  manner.  They  have  in  consequence  been 
thrown  into  the  shade  by  writers,  who,  though  less  studious 
of  truth  than  themselves,  understood  far  better  the  art  of 
producing  effect,  by  Livy  and  Quintus  Curtius. 

Yet  Polybius  and  Arrian  deserve  high  praise,  when  com- 
pared with  the  writers  of  that  school  of  which  Plutarch  may 
be  considered  as  the  head.  For  the  historians  of  this  class 
we  must  confess  that  we  entertain  a  peculiar  aversion.  They 
seem  to  have  been  pedants,  who,  though  destitute  of  those 
valuable  qualities  which  are  frequently  found  in  conjunction 
with  pedantry,  thought  themselves  great  philosophers  and 
great  politicians.  They  not  only  mislead  their  readers,  in 
every  page,  as  to  particular  facts,  but  they  appear  to  have 
altogether  misconceived  the  whole  character  of  the  times  of 
which  they  write.  They  were  inhabitants  of  an  empire 
bounded  by  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  Euphrates,  by  the 
ice  of  Scythia  and  the  sands  of  Mauritania;  composed  of 
nations  whose  manners,  whose  languages,  whose  religion, 
whose  countenances  and  complexions  were  widely  different, 
governed  by  one  mighty  despotism,  which  had  risen  on  the 
ruins  of  a  thousand  commonwealths  and  kingdoms.  Of 
liberty,  such  as  it  is  in  small  democracies,  of  patriotism, 


160        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

such  as  it  is  "in  small  independent  communities  of  any  kind, 
they  had,  and  they  could  have,  no  experimental  knowledge. 
But  they  had  read  of  men  who  exerted  themselves  in  the 
cause  of  their  country,  with  an  energy  unknown  in  later 
times,  who  had  violated  the  dearest  of  domestic  charities, 
or  voluntarily  devoted  themselves  to  death,  for  the  public 
good ;  and  they  wondered  at  the  degeneracy  of  their  con- 
temporaries. It  never  occurred  to  them,  that  the  feelings 
which  they  so  greatly  admired  sprang  from  local  and  occa- 
sional causes;  that  they  will  always  grow  up  spontaneously 
in  small  societies;  and  that,  in  large  empires,  though  they 
may  be  forced  into  existence  for  a  short  time  by  peculiar 
circumstances,  they  cannot  be  general  or  permanent.  It  is 
impossible  that  any  man  should  feel  for  a  fortress  on  a 
remote  frontier,  as  he  feels  for  his  own  house;  that  he 
should  grieve  for  a  defeat  in  which  ten  thousand  people 
whom  he  never  saw  have  fallen,  as  he  grieves  for  a  defeat 
which  has  half  unpeopled  the  street  in  which  he  lives;  that 
he  should  leave  his  home  for  a  military  expedition  in  order 
to  preserve  the  balance  of  power,  as  cheerfully  as  he  would 
leave  it  to  repel  invaders  who  had  begun  to  burn  all  the 
cornfields  in  his  neighbourhood. 

The  writers  of  whom  we  speak  should  have  considered 
this.  They  should  have  considered  that,  in  patriotism, 
such  as  it  existed  among  the  Greeks,  there  was  nothing 
essentially  and  eternally  good ;  that  an  exclusive  attachment 
to  a  particular  society,  though  a  natural,  and,  under  certain 
restrictions,  a  most  useful  sentiment,  implies  no  extraordi- 
nary attainments  in  wisdom  or  virtue;  that  where  it  has 
existed  in  an  intense  degree,  it  has  turned  states  into  gangs 
of  robbers,  whom  their  mutual  fidelity  has  rendered  more 
dangerous,  has  given  a  character  of  peculiar  atrocity  to  war, 
and  has  generated  that  worst  of  all  political  evils,  the  tyranny 
of  nations  over  nations. 

Enthusiastically  attached  to  the  name  of  liberty,  these 
historians  troubled  themselves  little  about  its  definition.  The 
Spartans,  tormented  by  ten  thousand  absurd  restraints,  un- 
able to  please  themselves  in  the  choice  of  their  wives,  their 
suppers,  or  their  company,  compelled  to  assume  a  peculiar 
manner,  and  to  talk  in  a  peculiar  style,  gloried  in  their  liberty. 
The  aristocracy  of  Rome  repeatedly  made  liberty  a  plea  for 


HISTORY.  161 

cutting  off  the  favourites  of  the  people.  In  almost  all  the 
little  commonwealths  of  antiquity,  liberty  was  used  as  a  pre- 
text for*measures  directed  against  every  thing  which  makes 
liberty  valuable,  for  measures  which  stifled  discussion,  cor- 
rupted the  administration  of  justice,  and  discouraged  the 
accumulation  of  property.  The  writers,  whose  works  we 
are  considering,  confounded  the  sound  with  the  substance, 
and  the  means  with  the  end.  Their  imaginations  were  in- 
flamed by  mystery.  They  conceived  of  liberty  as  monks 
conceive  of  love,  as  cockneys  conceive  of  the  happiness 
and  innocence  of  rural  life,  as  novel-reading  sempstresses 
conceive  of  Almack's  and  Grosvenor  Square,  accomplished 
marquesses  and  handsome  colonels  of  the  Guards.  In  the 
relation  of  events,  and  the  delineation  of  characters,  they  have 
paid  little  attention  to  facts,  to  the  costume  of  the  times  of 
which  they  pretend  to  treat,  or  to  the  general  principles  of 
human  nature.  They  have  been  faithful  only  to  their  own 
puerile  and  extravagant  doctrines.  Generals  and  statesmen 
are  metamorphosed  into  magnanimous  coxcombs,  from 
whose  fulsome  virtues  we  turn  away  with  disgust.  The  fine 
sayings  and  exploits  of  their  heroes  remind  us  of  the  insuf- 
ferable perfections  of  Sir  Charles  Grandison,  and  affect  us 
with  a  nausea  similar  to  that  which  we  feel  when  an  actor, 
in  one  of  Morton's  or  Kotzebue's  plays,  lays  his  hand  on 
his  heart,  advances  to  the  ground-lights,  and  mouths  a  moral 
sentence  for  the  edification  of  the  gods. 

These  writers,  men  who  knew  not  what  it  was  to  have  a 
country,  men  who  had  never  enjoyed  political  rights,  brought 
into  fashion  an  offensive  cant  about  patriotism  and  zeal  for 
freedom.  What  the  English  Puritans  did  for  the  language 
of  Christianity,  what  Scuderi  did  for  the  language  of  love, 
they  did  for  the  language  of  public  spirit.  By  habitual 
exaggeration  they  made  it  mean.  By  monotonous  emphasis 
they  made  it  feeble.  They  abused  it  till  it  became  scarcely 
possible  to  use  it  with  effect. 

Their  ordinary  rules  of  morality  are  deduced  from  extreme 
cases.  The  common  regimen  which  they  prescribe  for  so- 
ciety is  made  up  of  those  desperate  remedies  which  only  its 
most  desperate  distempers  require.  They  look  with  pecu- 
liar complacency  on  actions,  which  even  those  who  approve 
them  consider  as  exceptions  to  laws  of  almost  universal 

It* 


162  MACAULAY's   MISCELLANE017S   WRITINGS. 

application — which  bear  so  close  an  affinity  to  the  most 
atrocious  crimes,  that  even  where  it  may  be  unjust  to  cen- 
sure them,  it  is  unsafe  to  praise  them.  It  is  not  strange, 
therefore,  that  some  flagitious  instances  of  perfidy  and 
cruelty  should  have  been  passed  unchallenged  in  such  com- 
pany— that  grave  moralists,  with  no  personal  interest  at 
stake,  should  have  extolled,  in  the  highest  terms,  deeds  of 
which  the  atrocity  appalled  even  the  infuriated  factions  in 
whose  cause  they  were  perpretated..  The  part  which  Timo- 
leon  took  in  the  assassination  of  his  brother  shocked  many 
of  his  own  partisans.  The  recollection  of  it  preyed  long  on 
his  own  mind.  But  it  was  reserved  for  historians  who 
lived  some  centuries  later  to  discover  that  his  conduct  was 
a  glorious  display  of  virtue,  and  to  lament  that,  from  the 
frailty  of  human  nature,  a  man  who  could  perform  so  great 
an  exploit  could  repent  of  it. 

The  writings  of  these  men,  and  of  their  modern  imitators, 
have  produced  effects  which  deserve  some  notice.  The 
English  have  been  so  long  accustomed  to  political  specula- 
tion, and  have  enjoyed  so  large  a  measure  of  practical 
libert}^,  that  such  works  have  produced  little  effect  on  their 
minds.  We  have  classical  associations  and  great  names  of 
our  own,  which  we  can  confidently  oppose  to  the  most 
splendid  of  ancient  times.  Senate  has  not  to  our  ears  a 
sound  so  venerable  as  Parliament.  We  respect  the  Great 
Charter  more  than  the  laws  of  Solon.  The  Capitol  and  the 
Forum  impress  us  with  less  awe  than  our  own  Westminster 
Hall  and  Westminster  Abbey,  the  place  where  the  great 
men  of  twenty  generations  have  contended,  the  place  where 
they  sleep  together!  The  list  of  warriors  and  statesmen 
by  whom  our  constitution  was  founded  or  preserved,  from 
De  Monfort  down  to  Fox,  may  well  stand  a  comparison 
with  the  Fasti  of  Rome.  The  dying  thanksgiving  of  Sidney 
is  as  noble  as  the  libation  which  Thrasea  poured  to  Liberat- 
ing Jove :  and  we  think  with  far  less  pleasure  of  Cato  tear- 
ing out  his  entrails,  than  of  Russell  saying,  as  he  turned 
away  from  his  wife,  that  the  bitterness  of  death  was  past. — 
Even  those  parts  of  our  history,  over  which,  on  some  ac- 
counts, we  would  gladly  throw  a  veil,  may  be  proudly  op- 
posed to  those  on  which  the  moralists  of  antiquity  loved 
most  to  dwell.      The  enemy  of   English   liberty  was  not 


HISTORY.  163 

murdered  by  men  whom  lie  had  pardoned  and  loaded  with 
benefits.  He  was  not  stabbed  in  the  back  by  those  who 
smiled  and  cringed  before  his  face.  He  was  vanquished  on 
fields  of  stricken  battle;  he  was  arraigned,  sentenced,  and 
executed  in  the  face  of  heaven  and  earth.  Our  liberty  is 
neither  Greek  nor  Roman,  but  essentially  English.  It  has 
a  character  of  its  own — a  character  which  has  taken  a  tinge 
from  the  sentiments  of  the  chivalrous  ages,  and  which 
accords  with  the  peculiarities  of  our  manners  and  of  our 
insular  situation.  It  has  a  language,  too,  of  its  own,  and  a 
language  singularly  idiomatic,  full  of  meaning  k)  ourselves, 
scarcely  intelligible  to  strangers. 

Here,  therefore,  the  effect  of  books,  such  as  those  which 
we  have  been  considering,  has  been  harmless.  They  have, 
indeed,  given  currency  to  many  very  erroneous  opinions 
with  respect  to  ancient  history.  They  have  heated  the 
imagination  of  boj^s.  They  have  misled  the  judgment  and 
corrupted  the  taste  of  some  men  of  letters,  such  as  Akenside 
and  Sir  William  Jones.  But  on  persons  engaged  in  public 
affairs  they  have  had  very  little  influence.  The  foundations 
of  our  constitution  were  laid  by  men  who  knew  nothing  of 
the  Greeks,  but  that  they  denied  the  orthodox  procession 
and  cheated  the  Crusaders;  and  nothing  of  Rome,  but  that 
the  Pope  lived  there.  Those  who  followed,  contented  them- 
selves with  improving  on  the  original  plan.  They  found 
models  at  home,  and  therefore  they  did  not  look  for  them 
abroad.  But  when  enlightened  men  on  the  continent  began 
to  think  about  political  reformation,  having  no  patterns  be- 
fore their  eyes  in  their  domestic  history,  they  naturally  had 
recourse  to  those  remains  of  anticjuity,  the  study  of  which  is 
considered  throughout  Europe  as  an  important  part  of  edu- 
cation. The  historians  of  whom  we  have  been  speaking 
had  been  members  of  large  communities,  and  subjects  of 
absolute  sovereigns.  Hence  it  is,  as  we  have  already  said, 
that  they  commit  such  gross  errors  in  speaking  of  the  little 
republics  of  antiquity.  Their  works  were  now  read  in  the 
spirit  in  which  they  had  been  written.  They  were  read  by 
men  placed  in  circumstances  closely  resembling  their  own, 
unacquainted  with  the  real  nature  of  liberty,  but  inclined 
to  believe  every  thing  good  which  could  be  told  respecting 
it.     How  powerfully  these  books  impressed  these  specula- 


164         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

tive  reformers,  is  well  known  to  all  who  have  paid  any  atten 
tion  to  the  French  literature  of  the  last  century.  But,  per- 
haps, the  writer  on  whom  they  produced  the  greatest  effect^ 
was  Yittorio  Alfieri.  In  some  of  his  plays,  particularly  in 
Virginia,  Timoleon,  and  Brutus  the  Younger,  he  has  even 
caricatured  the  extravagance  of  his  masters. 

It  was  not  strange  that  the  blind,  thus  led  by  the  blind, 
should  stumble.  The  transactions  of  the  French  Revolution, 
m  some  measure,  took  their  character  from  these  works. 
VYithout  the  assistance  of  these  works,  indeed,  a  revolution 
\vould  have  taken  place — a  revolution  productive  of  much 
good  and  much  evil,  tremendous,  but  short-lived  evil,  dearly 
purchased,  but  durable  good.  But  it  would  not  have  been 
exactly  such  a  revolution.  The  style,  the  accessories,  would 
have  been  in  many  respects  different.  There  would  have 
been  less  of  bombast  in  language,  less  of  affectation  in  man- 
ner, less  of  solemn  trifling  and  ostentatious  simplicity.  The 
acts  of  legislative  assemblies,  and  the  correspondence  of 
diplomatists  would  not  have  been  disgraced  by  rants  worthy 
only  of  a  college  of  declamation.  The  government  of  a  great 
and  polished  nation  would  not  have  rendered  itself  ridicu- 
lous by  attempting  to  revive  the  usages  of  a  world  which 
had  long  passed  away,  or  rather  of  a  world  which  had  never 
existed  except  in  the  description  of  a  fantastic  school  of 
writers.  These  second-hand  imitations  resembled  the  originals 
about  as  much  as  the  classical  feasts  with  which  the  Doctor 
in  Peregrine  Pickle  turned  the  stomachs  of  all  his  guests 
resembled  one  of  the  suppers  of  Lucullus  in  the  Hall  of 
Apollo. 

These  were  mere  follies.  But  the  spirit  excited  by  these 
writers  produced  more  serious  effects.  The  greater  part 
of  the  crimes  which  disgraced  the  revolution  sprung  indeed 
from  the  relaxation  of  law,  from  popular  ignorance,  from  the 
remembrance  of  past  oppression,  from  the  fear  of  foreign 
conquest,  from  rapacity,  from  ambition,  from  party  spirit. 
But  many  atrocious  proceedings  must,  doubtless,  be  ascribed 
to  heated  imagination,  to  perverted  principle,  to  a  distaste 
for  what  was  vulgar  in  morals,  and  a  passion  for  what  was 
startling  and  dubious.  Mr.  Burke  has  touched  on  this 
subject  with  great  felicity  of  expression:  "The  gradation 
of  their  republic/'  says  he,  "  is  laid  in  moral  paradoxes. 


HISTORY.  165 

All  those  instances  to  be  found  in  history,  whether  real  or 
fabulous,  of  a  doubtful  public  spirit,  at  which  morality  is 
perplexed,  reason  is  staggered,  and  from  which  affrighted 
nature  recoils,  are  their  chosen  and  almost  sole  examples  for 
the  instruction  of  their  youth/^  This  evil,  we  believe,  is  to 
be  directly  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  the  historians  whom 
we  have  mentioned,  and  their  modern  imitators. 

Livy  had  some  faults  in  common  with  these  writers;  but 
on  the  whole  he  must  be  considered  as  forming  a  class  by 
himself.  No  historian  with  whom  we  are  acquainted  has 
shown  so  complete  an  indifference  to  truth.  He  seems  to 
have  cared  only  about  the  picturesque  effect  of  his  book  and 
the  honour  of  his  country.  On  the  other  hand,  we  do  not 
know,  in  the  whole  range  of  literature,  an  instance  of  a  bad 
thing  so  well  done.  The  painting  of  the  narrative  is  beyond 
description  vivid  and  graceful.  The  abundance  of  interesting 
sentiments  and  splendid  imagery  in  the  speeches  is  almost 
miraculous.  His  mind  is  a  soil  which  is  never  overteemed, 
a  fountain  which  never  seems  to  trickle.  It  pours  forth 
profusely,  yet  it  gives  no  sign  of  exhaustion.  It  was  pro- 
bably to  this  exuberance  of  thought  and  language,  always 
fresh,  always  sweet,  always  pure,  no  sooner  yielded  than 
repaired,  that  the  critics  applied  that  expression  which  has 
been  so  much  discussed,  lactea  uhertas. 

All  the  merits  and  all  the  defects  of  Livy  take  a  colour- 
ing from  the  character  of  his  nation.  He  was  a  writer  pecu- 
liarly Roman ;  the  proud  citizen  of  a  commonwealth  which 
had  indeed  lost  the  reality  of  liberty,  but  which  still  sacred- 
ly preserved  its  forms — in  fact  the  subject  of  an  arbitrary 
prince,  but  in  his  own  estimation  one  of  the  masters  of  the 
world,  with  a  hundred  kings  below  him,  and  only  the  gods 
above  him.  He  therefore  looked  back  on  former  times  with 
feelings  far  different  from  those  which  were  naturally  enter- 
tained by  his  Grreek  contemporaries,  and  which  at  a  later 
period  became  general  among  men  of  letters  throughout  the 
Roman  empire.  He  contemplated  the  past  with  interest 
and  delight,  not  because  it  furnished  a  contrast  to  the  pre- 
sent, but  because  it  had  led  to  the  present.  He  recurred 
to  it,  not  to  lose  in  proud  recollections  the  sense  of  national 
degradation,  but  to  trace  the  progress  of  national  glory.  It- 
is  true,  that  his  veneration  for  antiquity  produced  on  him 


166        macaulay's  mibcellaneous  writings. 

some  of  the  effects  whicli  it  produced  on  those  who  arrived 
at  it  by  a  very  different  road.  He  has  something  of  their 
exaggeration,  something  of  their  cant,  something  of  their 
fondness  for  anomalies  and  lusus  naturde  in  morality.  Yet 
even  here  we  perceive  a  difference.  They  talk  rapturously 
of  patriotism  and  liberty  in  the  abstract.  He  does  not  seem 
to  think  any  country  but  Rome  deserving  of  love;  nor  is  it 
for  liberty  as  liberty,  but  for  liberty  as  a  part  of  the  Roman 
institutions,  that  he  is  zealous. 

Of  the  concise  and  elegant  accounts  of  the  campaigns  of 
Caesar,  little  can  be  said.  They  are  incomparable  models 
for  military  despatches ;  but  histories  they  are  not,  and  do 
not  pretend  to  be. 

The  ancient  critics  placed  Sallust  in  the  same  rank  with 
Livy;  and  unquestionably  the  small  portion  of  his  works 
which  has  come  down  to  us  is  calculated  to  give  a  high 
opinion  of  his  talents.  But  his  style  is  not  very  pleasant  ] 
and  his  most  powerful  work,  the  account  of  the  Conspiracy 
of  Catiline,  has  rather  the  air  of  a  clever  party  pamphlet 
than  that  of  a  history.  It  abounds  with  strange  inconsist- 
encies, which,  unexplained  as  they  are,  necessarily  excite 
doubts  as  to  the  fairness  of  the  narrative.  It  is  true,  that 
many  circumstances  now  forgotten  may  have  been  familiar 
to  his  contemporaries,  and  may  have  rendered  passages 
clear  to  them  which  to  us  appear  dubious  and  perplexing. 
But  a  great  historian  should  remember  that  he  writes  for 
distant  generations,  for  men  who  will  perceive  the  apparent 
contradictions,  and  will  possess  no  means  of  reconciling 
them.  We  can  only  vindicate  the  fidelity  of  Sallust  at  the 
expense  of  his  skill.  But  in  fact,  all  the  information  which 
we  have  from  contemporaries  respecting  this  famous  plot  is 
liable  to  the  same  objection,  and  is  read  by  discerning  men 
with  the  same  incredulity.  It  is  all  on  one  side.  No 
answer  has  reached  our  times;  yet,  on  the  showing  of  the 
accusers,  the  accused  seem  entitled  to  acquittal.  Catiline, 
we  are  told,  intrigued  with  a  Vestal  virgin,  and  murdered  his 
own  son.  His  house  was  a  den  of  gamblers  and  debauchees. 
No  young  man  could  cross  his  threshold  without  danger  to 
his  fortune  and  reputation.  Yet  this  is  the  man  with  whom 
Cicero  was  willing  to  coalesce  in  a  contest  for  the  first  ma- 
gistracy of  the  republic;  and  whom  he  described,  long  after 


HISTOEY.  167 

the  fatal  termination  of  the  conspiracy,  as  an  accomplished 
hypocrite,  by  whom  he  had  himself  been  deceived,  and  who 
had  acted  with  consummate  skill  the  character  of  a  good 
citizen  and  a  good  friend.  We  are  told  that  the  plot  was 
the  most  wicked  and  desperate  ever  known,  and,  almost  in 
the  same  breath,  that  the  great  body  of  the  people,  and 
many  of  the  nobles  favoured  it ;  that  the  richest  citizens  of 
Rome  were  eager  for  the  spoliation  of  all  property,  and  its 
highest  functionaries  for  the  destruction  of  all  order ;  that 
Crassus,  Caesar,  the  praetor  Lentulus,  one  of  the  consuls  of 
the  year,  one  of  the  consuls  elect,  were  proved  or  suspected 
to  be  engaged  in  a  scheme  for  subverting  institutions  to 
which  they  owed  the  highest  honours,  and  introducing 
universal  anarchy.  We  are  told,  that  a  government  which 
knew  all  this  suffered  the  conspirator,  whose  rank,  talents, 
and  courage  rendered  him  most  dangerous,  to  quit  Rome 
without  molestation.  We  are  told,  that  bondmen  and  gladi- 
ators were  to  be  armed  against  the  citizens.  Yet  we  find 
that  Catiline  rejected  the  slaves  who  crowded  to  enlist  in 
his  army,  lest,  as  Sallust  himself  expresses  it,  ^'  he  should 
seem  to  identify  their  cause  with  that  of  the  citizens." 
Finally,  we  are  told  that  the  magistrate,  who  was  universally 
allowed  to  have  saved  all  classes  of  his  countrymen  from 
conflagration  and  massacre,  rendered  himself  so  unpopular 
by  his  conduct,  that  a  marked  insult  was  offered  to  him  at 
the  expiration  of  his  office,  and  a  severe  punishment  inflicted 
on  him  shortly  after. 

Sallust  tells  us,  what,  indeed,  the  letters  and  speeches  of 
Cicero  sufficiently  prove,  that  some  persons  considered  the 
shocking  and  atrocious  parts  of  the  plot  as  mere  inventions 
of  the  government,  designed  to  excuse  its  unconstitutional 
measures.  We  must  confess  ourselves  to  be  of  that  opinion. 
There  was,  undoubtedly,  a  strong  party  desirous  to  change 
the  administration.  While  Pompey  held  the  command  of 
an  army,  they  could  not  effect  their  purpose  without  prepar- 
ing means  for  repelling  force,  if  necessary,  by  force.  In  all 
this  there  is  nothing  different  from  the  ordinary  practice  of 
Roman  factions.  The  other  charges  brought  against  the 
conspirators  are  so  inconsistent  and  improbable,  that  we 
give  no  credit  whatever  to  them.  If  our  readers  think  this 
skepticism  unreasonable,  let  them  turn  to  the  contemporary 


168        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

account  of  the  Popish  plot.  Let  them  look  over  the  votea 
of  Parliament,  and  the  speeches  of  the  king;  the  charges 
of  Scroggs,  and  the  harangues  of  the  managers  employed 
against  Strafford.  A  person,  who  should  form  his  judgment 
from  these  pieces  alone,  would  believe  that  London  was  set 
on  fire  by  the  Papists,  and  that  Sir  Edmondbury  Godfrey 
was  murdered  for  his  religion.  Yet  these  stories  are  now 
altogether  exploded.  They  have  been  abandoned  by  states- 
men to  aldermen,  by  aldermen  to  clergymen,  by  clergymen 
to  old  women,  and  by  old  women  to  Sir  Harcourt  Lees. 

Of  the  Latin  historians,  Tacitus  was  certainly  the  great- 
est. His  style,  indeed,  is  not  only  faulty  in  itself,  but  is,  in 
some  respects,  peculiarly  unfit  for  historical  composition. 
He  carries  his  love  of  effect  far  beyond  the  limits  of  modera- 
tion. He  tells  a  fine  story  finely  :  but  he  cannot  tell  a  plain 
story  plainly.  He  stimulates  till  all  stimulants  lose  their 
power.  Thucycides,  as  we  have  already  observed,  relates 
ordinary  transactions  with  the  unpretending  clearness  and 
succinctness  of  the  gazette.  His  great  powers  of  painting 
he  reserves  for  events  of  which  the  slightest  details  are  in- 
teresting. The  simplicity  of  the  setting  gives  additional 
lustre  to  the  brilliants.  There  are  passages  in  the  narrative 
of  Tacitus  superior  to  the  best  which  can  be  quoted  from 
Thucydides.  But  they  are  not  enchased  and  relieved  with 
the  same  skill.  They  are  fiir  more  striking  when  extracted 
from  the  body  of  the  work  to  which  they  belong,  than  when 
they  occur  in  their  place  and  are  read  in  connection  with 
what  precedes  and  follows. 

In  the  delineation  of  character,  Tacitus  is  unrivalled 
among  historians,  and  has  very  few  superiors  among  drama- 
tists and  novelists'.  By  the  delineation  of  character,  we  do 
not  mean  the  practice  of  drawing  up  epigrammatic  cata- 
logues of  good  and  bad  qualities,  and  appending  them  to 
the  names  of  eminent  men.  No  writer,  indeed,  has  done 
this  more  skilfully  than  Tacitus :  but  this  is  not  his  peculiar 
glory.  All  the  persons  who  occupy  a  large  space  in  his 
works  have  an  individuality  of  character  which  seems  to 
pervade  all  their  words  and  actions.  We  know  them  as  if 
we  had  lived  with  them.  Claudius,  Nero,  Otho,  both  the 
Agrippinas,  are  masterpieces.  But  Tiberius  is  a  still  higher 
miracle  of  art.     The  historian  undertook  to  make  us  inti- 


HISTORY.  169 

mately  acquainted  with  a  man  singularly  dark  and  inscru- 
table— with  a  man  whose  real  disposition  long  remained 
swathed  up  in  intricate  folds  of  factitious  virtues ;  and  over 
whose  actions  the  hypocrisy  of  his  youth,  and  the  seclusion 
of  his  old  age,  threw  a  singular  mystery.  He  was  to  ex- 
hibit the  specious  equalities  of  the  tyrant  in  a  light  which 
might  render  them  transparent,  and  enable  us  at  once  to 
perceive  the  covering  and  the  vices  which  it  concealed.  He 
was  to  trace  the  gradations  by  which  the  first  magistrate  of 
a  republic,  a  senator  mingling  freely  in  debate,  a  noble  as- 
sociating with  his  brother  nobles,  was  transformed  into  an 
Asiatic  sultan;  he  was  to  exhibit  a  character  distinguished 
by  courage,  self-command,  and  profound  policy,  yet  defiled 
by  all 

*'th'  extravagancy 
And  crazy  ribaldry  of  fancy." 

He  was  to  mark  the  gTadual  efi'ect  of  advancing  age  and 
approaching  death  on  this  strange  compound  of  strength  and 
weakness ;  to  exhibit  the  old  sovereign  of  the  world  sinking 
into  a  dotage  which,  though  it  rendered  his  appetites  eccen- 
tric, and  his  temper  savage,  never  impaired  the  powers  of 
his  stern  and  penetrating  mind,  conscious  of  failing  strength, 
raging  with  capricious  sensuality,  yet  to  the  last  the  keenest 
of  observers,  the  most  artful  of  dissemblers,  and  the  most 
terrible  of  masters.  The  task  was  one  of  extreme  difficulty. 
The  execution  is  almost  perfect. 

The  talent  which  is  required  to  write  history  thus  bears 
a  considerable  affinity  to  the  talent  of  a  great  dramatist. 
There  is  one  obvious  distinction.  The  dramatist  creates, 
the  historian  only  disposes.  The  difference  is  not  in  the 
mode  of  execution,  but  in  the  mode  of  conception.  Shak- 
speare  is  guided  by  a  model  which  exists  in  his  imagination  j 
Tacitus,  by  a  model  furnished  from  without.  Hamlet  is  to 
Tiberius  what  the  Laocoon  is  to  the  Newton  of  Roubilliac. 

In  this  part  of  his  art,  Tacitus  certainly  had  neither  equal 
nor  second  among  the  ancient  historians.  Herodotus,  though 
he  wrote  in  a  dramatic  form,  had  little  of  dramatic  genius. 
The  frequent  dialogues  which  he  introduces  give  vivacity 
and  movement  to  the  narrative,  but  are  not  strikingly  cha- 
racteristic. Xenophon  is  fond  of  telling  his  readers,  at  con- 
siderable length,  what  he  thought  of  the  persons  whose  ad- 

VoL.  r.— 15 


\i 


170  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

ventures  he  relates.  But  he  does  not  show  them  the  men, 
and  enable  them  to  judge  for  themselves.  The  heroes  of 
Livj  are  the  most  insipid  of  all  beings,  real  or  imaginary, 
the  heroes  of  Plutarch  always  excepted.  Indeed,  the  man- 
ner of  Plutarch  in  this  respect  reminds  us  of  the  cookery  of 
those  continental  inns,  the  horror  of  English  travellers,  in 
which  a  certain  nondescript  broth  is  kept  constantly  boiling, 
and  copiously  poured,  without  distinction,  over  every  dish 
as  it  comes  up  to  table.  Thucydides,  though  at  a  wide  in- 
terval, comes  next  to  Tacitus.  His  Pericles,  his  Nicias,  his 
Cleon,  his  Brasidas,  are  happily  discriminated.  The  lines 
are  few,  the  colouring  faint;  but  the  general  air  and  ex- 
pression is  caught. 

We  begin,  like  the  priest  in  Don  Quixote's  library,  to  be 
tired  taking  down  books  one  after  another  for  separate 
judgment,  and  feel  inclined  to  pass  sentence  on  them  in 
masses.  We  shall,  therefore,  instead  of  pointing  out  the 
defects  and  merits  of  the  different  modern  historians,  state 
generally  in  what  particulars  they  have  surpassed  their  pre- 
decessors, and  in  what  we  conceive  them  to  have  failed. 

They  have  certainly  been,  in  one  sense,  far  more  strict  in 
their  adherence  to  truth  than  most  of  the  Grreek  and  Roman 
writers.  They  do  not  think  themselves  entitled  to  render 
their  narrative  interesting  by  introducing  descriptions,  con- 
versations, and  harangues,  which  have  no  existence  but  in 
their  own  imagination.  This  improvement  was  gradually 
introduced.  History  commenced  among  the  modern  na- 
tions of  Europe,  as  it  had  commenced  among  the  Greeks,  in 
romance.  Froissart  was  our  Herodotus.  Italy  was  to 
Europe  what  Athens  was  to  Greece.  In  Italy,  therefore,  a 
more  accurate  and  manly  mode  of  narration  was  early  in- 
troduced. Machiavelli  and  Guicciardini,  in  imitation  of 
Livy  and  Thucydides,  composed  speeches  for  their  historical 
personages.  But  as  the  classical  enthusiasm  which  dis- 
tinguished the  age  of  Lorenzo  and  Leo  gradually  subsided, 
this  absurd  practice  was  abandoned.  In  France,  we  fear, 
it  still,  in  some  degree,  keeps  its  ground.  In  our  own 
country,  a  writer  who  should  venture  on  it  would  be  laughed  to 
scorn.  Whether  the  historians  of  the  last  two  centuries  tell 
more  truth  than  those  of  antiquity,  may  perhaps  be  doubted. 
But  it  is  quite  certain  that  they  tell  fewer  falsehoods. 


HISTORY.  171 

In  the  philosophy  of  history,  the  moderns  have  very  far 
surpassed  the  ancients.  It  is  not,  indeed,  strange  that  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  should  not  have  carried  the  science  of 
government,  or  any  other  experimental  science,  so  far  as  it 
has  been  carried  in  our  time;  for  the  experimental  sciences 
are  generally  in  a  state  of  progression.  They  were  better 
understood  in  the  seventeenth  century  than  in  the  sixteenth, 
and  in  the  eighteenth  century  than  in  the  seventeenth.  But 
this  constant  improvement,  this  natural  growth  of  know- 
ledge, will  not  altogether  account  for  the  immense  superi- 
ority of  the  modern  writers.  The  difference  is  a  difference, 
not  in  degree,  but  of  kind.  It  is  not  merely  that  new  prin- 
ciples have  been  discovered,  but  that  new  faculties  seem  to 
be  exerted.  It  is  not  that  at  one  time  the  human  intellect 
should  have  made  but  small  progress,  and  at  another  time 
have  advanced  far;  but  that  at  one  time  it  should-have  been 
stationary,  and  at  another  time  constantly  proceeding.  In 
taste  and  imagination,  in  the  graces  of  style,  in  the  arts  of 
persuasion,  in  the  magnificence  of  public  works,  the  ancients 
were  at  least  our  equals.  They  reasoned  as  justly  as  our- 
selves on  subjects  which  required  pure  demonstration.  But 
in  the  moral  sciences  they  made  scarcely  any  advance. 
During  the  long'  period  which  elapsed  between  the  fifth 
century  before  the  Christian  era  and  the  fifth  century  after 
it,  little  perceptible  progress  was  made.  All  the  meta- 
physical discoveries  of  all  the  philosophers,  from  the  time 
of  Socrates  to  the  northern  invasion,  are  not  to  be  compared 
in  importance  with  those  which  have  been  made  in  Eng- 
land every  fifty  years  since  the  time  of  Elizabeth.  There 
is  not  the  least  reason  to  believe  that  the  principles  of  go- 
vernment, legislation,  and  political  economy  were  better 
understood  in  the  time  of  Augustus  Caesar,  than  in  the  time 
of  Pericles.  In  our  own  country,  the  sound  doctrines  of 
trade  and  jurisprudence  have  been,  within  the  lifetime  of  a 
single  generation,  dimly  hinted,  boldly  propounded,  de- 
fended, systematized,  adopted  by  all  reflecting  men  of  all 
parties,  quoted  in  legislative  assemblies,  incorporated  into 
laws  and  treaties. 

To  what  is  this  change  to  be  attributed?  Partly,  no 
doubt,  to  the  discovery  of  printing, — a  discovery  which  has 


172  macaulay's  miscellaneous  wkitings. 

not  only  diffused  knowledge  widely,  but,  as  we  have  already 
observed,  has  also  introduced  into  reasoning  a  precision  un- 
known in  those  ancient  communities,  in  which  information 
was,  for  the  most  part,  conveyed  orall3\  There  was,  we 
suspect,  another  cause,  less  obvious,  but  still  more  powerful. 
The  spirit  of  the  two  most  famous  nations  of  antiquity  was 
remarkably  exclusive.  In  the  time  of  Homer,  the  Greeks 
had  not  begun  to  consider  themselves  as  a  distinct  race. 
They  still  looked  with  something  of  childish  wonder  and 
awe  on  the  riches  and  wisdom  of  Sidori  and  Egypt.  From 
what  causes,  and  by  what  gradations,  their  feelings  under- 
went a  change,  it  is  not  easy  to  determine.  Their  history, 
from  the  Trojan  to  the  Persian  war,  is  covered  with  an  ob- 
scurity broken  only  by  dim  and  scattered  gleams  of  truth. 
But  it  is  certain  that  a  great  alteration  took  place.  They 
regarded  themselves  as  a  separate  people.  They  had  com- 
mon religious  rites,  and  common  principles  of  public  law, 
in  which  foreigners  had  no  part.  In  all  their  political  sys- 
tems, monarchical,  aristocratical,  and  democratical,  there 
was  a  strong  family  likeness.  After  the  retreat  of  Xerxes 
and  the  fall  of  Mardonius,  national  pride  rendered  the  sepa- 
ration between  the  Greeks  and  the  Barbarians  complete. 
The  conquerors  considered  themselves  men  of  a  superior 
breed,  men  who,  in  their  intercourse  with  the  neighbouring 
nations,  were  to  teach,  and  not  to  learn.  They  looked  for 
nothing  out  of  themselves.  They  borrowed  nothing.  They 
translated  nothing.  We  cannot  call  to  mind  a  single  ex- 
pression of  any  Greek  writer  earlier  than  the  age  of  Augus- 
tus, indicating  an  opinion  that  any  thing  worth  reading  could 
be  written  in  any  language  except  his  own.  The  feelings 
which  sprung  from  national  glory  were  not  altogether  ex- 
tinguished by  national  degi-adation.  They  were  fondly  che- 
rished through  ages  of  slavery  and  shame.  The  literature 
of  Home  herself  was  jogarded  with  contempt  by  those  who 
had  fled  before  her  arms,  and  who  bowed  beneath  her  fasces. 
Voltaire  says,  in  one  of  his  six  thousand  pamphlets,  that  ho 
was  the  first  person  who  told  the  French  that  England  had 
produced  eminent  men  besides  the  Duke  of  Marlborough. 
Down  to  a  very  late  period,  the  Greeks  seem  to  have  stood 
in  need  of  similar  information  with  respect  to  their  masters. 
With  Paulus  JEmilius,  Sylla,  and  Caesar,  they  were  well 


HISTORY.  173 

acquainted.  But  the  notions  which  they  entertained  respect- 
ing Cicero  and  Virgil  were,  probably,  not  unlike  those  which 
Boileau  may  have  formed  about  Shakspeare.  Dionysius 
lived  in  the  most  splendid  age  of  Latin  poetry  and  elo- 
quence. He  was  a  critic,  and,  after  the  manner  of  his  age, 
an  able  critic.  He  studied  the  language  of  Rome,  associated 
with  its  learned  men,  and  compiled  its  history.  Yet  he 
seems  to  have  thought  its  literature  valuable  only  for  the 
purpose  of  illustrating  its  antiquities.  His  reading  appears 
to  have  been  confined  to  its  public  records  and  to  a  few  old 
annalists.  Once,  and  but  once,  if  we  remember  rightly,  he 
quotes  Ennius,  to  solve  a  question  of  etymology.  He  has 
written  much  on  the  art  of  oratory ;  yet  he  has  not  men- 
tioned the  name  of  Cicero. 

The  ivomans  submitted  to  the  pretensions  of  a  race  which 
they  despised.  Their  epic  poet,  while  he  claimed  for  them 
pre-eminence  in  the  arts  of  government  and  war,  acknow- 
ledged their  inferiority  in  taste,  eloquence,  and  science. 
Men  of  letters  affected  to  understand  the  Greek  language 
better  than  their  own.  Pomponius  preferred  the  honour  of 
becoming  an  Athenian",  by  intellectual  naturalization,  to  all 
the  distinctions  which  were  to  be  acquired  in  the  political 
contests  of  Rome.  His  great  friend  composed  Greek  poems 
and  memoirs.  It  is  well  known  that  Petrarch  considered 
that  beautiful  language  in  which  his  sonnets  are  written,  as 
a  barbarous  jargon,  and  intrusted  his  fame  to  those  wretched 
Latin  hexameters,  which,  during  the  last  four  centuries, 
have  scarcely  found  four  readers.  Many  eminent  Romans 
appear  to  have  felt  the  same  contempt  for  their  native  tongue 
as  compared  with  the  Greek.  The  prejudice  continued  to 
a  very  late  period.  Julian  was  as  partial  to  the  Greek  lan- 
guage as  Frederick  the  Great  to  the  French ;  and  it  seems 
that  he  could  not  express  himself  with  elegance  in  the  dia- 
lect of  the  state  which  he  ruled. 

Even  those  Latin  writers  who  did  not  carry  this  affecta- 
tion so  far,  looked  on  Greece  as  the  only  fount  of  knowledge. 
From  Greece  they  derived  the  measures  of  their  poetry,  and 
indeed,  all  of  poetry  that  can  be  imported.  From  Greece 
they  borrowed  the  principles  and  the  vocabulary  of  their 
philosophy.  To  the  literature  of  other  nations  they  do  not 
seem  to  have  paid  the  slightest  attention.  The  sacred  books 
15* 


174         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

of  the  Hebrews,  for  example,  books  which,  considered 
merely  as  human  compositions,  are  invaluable  to  the  critic, 
the  antiquary,  and  the  philosopher,  seem  to  have  been 
utterly  unnoticed  by  them.  The  peculiarities  of  Judaism, 
and  the  rapid  growth  of  Christianity,  attracted  their  notice. 
They  made  war  against  the  Jews.  They  made  laws  against 
the  Christians.  But  they  never  opened  the  books  of  Moses. 
Juvenal  quotes  the  Pentateuch  with  censure.  The  author  of 
the  treatise  on  "  the  Sublime"  quotes  it  with  praise :  but  both 
of  them  quote  it  erroneously.  When  we  consider  what  sub- 
lime poetry,  what  curious  history,  what  striking  and  peculiar 
views  of  the  divine  nature,  and  of  the  social  duties  of  men, 
are  to  be  found  in  the  Jewish  Scriptures ;  when  we  consider 
the  two  sects  on  which  the  attention  of  the  government  was 
constantly  fixed,  appealed  to  those  Scriptures  as  the  rule  of 
their  faith  and  practice  this  indifference  is  astonishing.  The 
fact  seems  to  be,  that  the  Greeks  admired  only  themselves, 
and  that  the  Romans  admired  only  themselves  and  the 
G-reeks.  Literary  men  turned  away  with  disgust  from  modes 
of  thought  and  expression  so  widely  different  from  all  that 
they  had  been  accustomed  to  admire.-  The  effect  was  nar- 
rowness and  sameness  of  thought.  Their  minds,  if  we  may 
so  express  ourselves,  bred  in  and  in,  and  were  accordingly 
cursed  with  barrenness  and  degeneracy.  No  extraneous 
beauty  or  vigour  was  engrafted  on  the  decaying  stock.  By 
an  exclusive  attention  to  one  class  of  phenomena,  by  an  ex- 
clusive taste  for  one  species  of  excellence,  the  human  intel- 
lect was  stunted.  Occasional  coincidences  were  turned  into 
general  rules.  Prejudices  were  confounded  with  instincts. 
On  man,  as  he  was  found  in  a  particular  state  of  society,  on 
government,  as  it  had  existed  in  a  particular  corner  of  the 
world,  many  just  observations  were  made;  but  of  man  as  man, 
or  government  as  government,  little  was  known.  Philosophy 
remained  stationary.  Slight  changes,  sometimes  for  the 
worse  and  sometimes  for  the  better,  were  made  in  the  super- 
{5tructure.  But  nobody  thought  of  examining  the  foundations. 
The  vast  despotism  of  the  Ca3sars,  gradually  effacing  all 
national  peculiarities,  and  assimilating  the  remotest  pro- 
vinces of  the  Empire  to  each  other,  augmented  the  evil.  At 
the  close  of  the  third  century  after  Christ,  the  prospects  of 
mankind  wers  fearfully  dreary.     A  system  of  etiquette,  aa 


HISTORY.  175 

pompously  frivolous  as  that  of  the  Escurial,  had  been  esta- 
blished. A  sovereign  almost  invisible ;  a  crowd  of  dignitaries 
minutely  distinguished  by  badges  and  titles ;  rhetoricians 
who  said  nothing  but  what  had  been  said  ten  thousand  times ; 
schools  in  which  nothing  was  taught  but  what  had  been  known 
for  ages — such  was  the  machinery  provided  for  the  govern- 
ment and  instruction  of  the  most  enlightened  part  of  the 
human  race.  That  great  community  was  then  in  danger  of 
experiencing  a  calamity  far  more  terrible  than  any  of  the 
quick,  inflammatory,  destroying  maladies  to  which  nations 
are  liable — a  tottering,  drivelling,  paralytic  longevity,  the 
immortality  of  the  Struldbrugs,  a  Chinese  civilization.  It 
would  be  easy  to  indicate  many  points  of  resemblance  be- 
tween the  subjects  of  Diocletian  and  the  people  of  that 
Celestial  Empire,  where,  during  many  centuries  nothing  has 
been  learned  or  unlearned ;  where  government,  where  edu- 
cation, where  the  whole  system  of  life  is  a  ceremony ;  where 
knowledge  forgets  to  increase  and  multiply,  and,  like  the 
talent  buried  in  the  earth,  or  the  pound  wrapped  up  in  the 
napkin,  experiences  neither  waste  nor  augmentation. 

The  torpor  was  broken  by  two  great  revolutions,  the  one 
moral,  the  other  political,  the  one  from  within,  the  other 
from  without.  The  victory  of  Christianity  over  paganism, 
considered  with  relation  to  this  subject  only,  was  of  great  im- 
portance. It  overthrew  the  old  system  of  morals ;  and,  with 
it,  much  of  the  old  system  of  metaphysics.  It  furnished  the 
orator  with  new  topics  of  declamation,  and  the  logician  with 
new  points  of  controversy.  Above  all,  it  introduced  a  new 
principle,  of  which  the  operation  was  constantly  felt  in 
every  part  of  society.  It  stirred  the  stagnant  mass  from 
the  inmost  depths.  It  excited  all  the  passions  of  a  stormy 
democracy  in  the  quiet  and  listless  population  of  an  over- 
grown empire.  The  fear  of  heresy  did  what  the  sense  of 
oppression  could  not  do ;  it  changed  men,  accustomed  to  be 
turned  over  like  sheep  from  tyrant  to  tyrant,  into  devoted 
partisans  and  obstinate  rebels.  The  tones  of  an  eloquence 
which  had  been  silent  for  ages  resounded  from  the  pulpit  of 
Gregory.  A  spirit  which  had  been  extinguished  on  the 
plains  of  Philippi,  revived  in  Athanasius  and  Ambrose. 

Yet  even  this  remedy  was  not  sufficiently  violent  for  the 
disease.     It  did  net  prevent  the  empire  of  Constantinople 


176         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

from  relapsing,  after  a  short  paroxysm  of  excitement,  into 
a  state  of  stupefaction,  to  which  history  furnishes  scarcely 
any  parallel.  We  there  find  that  a  polished  society,  a  soci- 
ety in  which  a  most  intricate  and  elaborate  system  of  juris- 
prudence was  established,  in  which  the  arts  of  luxury  were 
well  understood,  in  which  the  works  of  the  great  ancient 
writers  were  preserved  and  studied,  existed  for  nearly  a 
thousand  years  without  making  one  great  discovery  in  sci- 
ence, or  producing  one  book  which  is  read  by  any  but  curi- 
ous inquirers.  There  were  tumults,  too,  and  controversies, 
and  viars  in  abundance ;  and  these  things,  bad  as  they  are 
in  themselves,  have  generally  been  favourable  to  the  pro- 
gress of  the  intellect.  But  here  they  tormented  without 
stimulating.  The  waters  were  troubled,  but  no  healing  in- 
fluence descended.  The  agitations  resembled  the  grinnings 
and  writhings  of  a  galvanized  corpse,  not  the  struggles  of 
an  athletic  man. 

From  this  miserable  state  the  Western  Empire  was  saved 
by  the  fiercest  and  most  destroying  visitation  with  which 
God  had  ever  chastened  his  creatures — the  invasion  of  the 
Northern  nations.  Such  a  cure  was  required  for  such  a 
distemper.  The  Fire  of  London,  it  has  been  observed,  was 
a  blessing.  It  burned  down  the  city,  but  it  burned  out  the 
plague.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  tremendous  devasta- 
tion of  the  Roman  dominions.  It  annihilated  the  noisome 
recesses  in  which  lurked  the  seeds  of  great  moral  maladies ; 
it  cleared  an  atmosphere  fatal  to  the  health  and  vigour  of  the 
human  mind.  It  cost  Europe  a  thousand  years  of  barbarism 
to  escape  the  fate  of  China. 

At  length  the  terrible  purification  was  accomplished ;  and 
the  second  civilization  of  mankind  commenced,  under  cir- 
cumstances which  afforded  a  strong  security  that  it  would 
never  retrograde  and  never  pause.  Europe  was  now  a  great 
federal  community.  Her  numerous  states  were  united  by 
the  easy  ties  of  international  law  and  a  common  religion. 
Their  institutions,  their  languages,  their  manners,  their 
tastes  in  literature,  their  modes  of  education,  were  widely 
difierent.  Their  connection  was  close  enough  to  allow  of  mu- 
tual observation  and  improvement,  yet  not  so  close  as  to 
destroy  the  idioms  of  natural  opinion  and  feeling. 

The  balance  of  moral  and  intellectual  influence,  thus 


HISTORY.  177 

established  between  the  nations  of  Europe,  is  far  more 
important  than  the  balance  of  political  power.  Indeed,  we 
are  inclined  to  think  that  the  latter  is  valuable  principally 
because  it  tends  to  maintain  the  former.  The  civilized  world 
has  thus  been  preserved  from  an  uniformity  of  character 
fatal  to  all  improvement.  Every  part  of  it  has  been  illumi- 
nated with  light  reflected  from  every  other.  Competition 
has  produced  activity  where  monopoly  would  have  produced 
sluggishness.  The  number  of  experiments  in  moral  science, 
which  the  speculator  has  an  opportunity  of  witnessing,  has 
been  increased  beyond  all  calculation.  Society  and  human 
nature,  instead  of  being  seen  in  a  single  point  of  view,  are 
presented  to  him  under  ten  thousand  different  aspects.  By 
observing  the  manners  of  surrounding  nations,  by  studying 
their  literature,  by  comparing  it  with  that  of  his  own  country 
and  of  the  ancient  republics,  he  is  enabled  to  correct  those 
errors  into  which  the  most  acute  men  must  fall  when  they 
reason  from  a  single  species  to  a  genus.  He  learns  to  dis- 
tinguish what  is  local  from  what  is  universal ;  what  is  tran- 
sitory from  what  is  eternal ;  to  discriminate  between  excep- 
tions and  rules ;  to  trace  the  operation  of  disturbing  causes ; 
to  separate  those  general  principles  which  are  always  true 
and  everywhere  applicable,  from  the  accidental  circum- 
stances with  which,  in  every  community,  they  are  blended, 
and  with  which,  in  an  isolated  community,  they  are  con- 
founded by  the  most  philosophical  mind. 

Hence  it  is,  that  in  generalization,  the  writers  of  modern 
times  have  far  surpassed  those  of  antiquity.  The  historians 
of  our  own  country  are  unequalled  in  depth  and  precision 
of  reason ;  and  even  in  the  works  of  our  mere  compilers, 
we  often  meet  with  speculations  beyond  the  reach  of  Thu- 
cydides  or  Tacitus. 

But  it  must,  at  the  same  time,  be  admitted  that  they  have 
characteristic  faults,  so  closely  connected  with  their  charac- 
teristic merits,  and  of  such  magnitude,  that  it  may  well  be 
doubted  whether,  on  the  whole,  this  department  of  literature 
has  gained  or  lost  during  the  last  two-and-twenty  centuries. 

The  best  historians  of  later  times  have  been  seduced  from 
truth,  not  by  their  imagination,  but  by  their  reason.  They 
far  excel  their  predecessors  in  the  art  of  deducing  general 
principles  from  facts.     But,  unhappily,  they  have  fallen  into 


178         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

the  error  of  distorting  facts  to  suit  general  principles.  They 
arrive  at  the  theory  from  looking  at  some  of  the  phenomena, 
and  the  remaining  phenomena  they  strain  or  curtail  to  suit 
the  theory.  For  this  purpose  it  is  not  necessary  that  they 
should  assert  what  is  absolutely  false,  for  all  questions  in 
morals  and  politics  are  questions  of  comparison  and  degree. 
Any  proposition  which  does  not  involve  a  contradiction  in 
terms  may,  by  possibility,  be  true ;  and  if  all  the  circum- 
stances which  raise  a  probability  in  its  favour  be  stated  and 
enforced,  and  those  which  lead  to  an  opposite  conclusion  be 
omitted  or  lightly  passed  over,  it  may  appear  to  be  demon- 
strated. In  every  human  character  and  transaction  there  is 
a  mixture  of  good  and  evil ; — a  little  exaggeration,  a  little 
suppression,  a  judicious  use  of  epithets,  a  watchful  and 
searching  skepticism  with  respect  to  the  evidence  on  one 
side,  a  convenient  credulity  with  respect  to  every  report  or 
tradition  on  the  other,  may  easily  make  a  saint  of  Laud,  or 
a  tyrant  of  Henry  the  Fourth. 

This  species  of  misrepresentation  abounds  in  the  most 
valuable  works  of  modern  historians.  Herodotus  tells  his 
story  like  a  slovenly  witness,  who,  heated  by  partialities  and 
prejudices,  unacquainted  with  the  established  rules  of  evi- 
dence, and  uninstructed  as  to  the  obligations  of  his  oath, 
confounds  what  he  imagines  with  what  he  has  seen  and 
heard,  and  brings  out  facts,  reports,  conjectures,  and  fancies 
in  one  mass.  Hume  is  an  accomplished  advocate.  With- 
out positively  asserting  much  more  than  he  can  prove,  he 
gives  prominence  to  all  the  circumstances  which  support 
his  case ;  he  glides  lightly  over  those  which  are  unfavourable 
to  it ;  his  own  witnesses  are  applauded  and  encour%ed ; 
the  statements  which  seem  to  throw  discredit  on  them  are 
controverted;  the  contradictions  into  which  they  fall  are 
explained  away ;  a  clear  and  connected  abstract  of  their  evi- 
dence is  given.  Every  thing  that  is  offered  on  the  other  side 
is  scrutinized  with  the  utmost  severity;  every  suspicious 
j  circumstance  is  a  ground  for  comment  and  invective ;  what 
j  cannot  be  denied  is  extenuated,  or  passed  by  without  notice ; 
[  concessions  even  are  sometimes  made  ;  but  this  insidious 
candour  only  increases  the  effect  of  the  vast  mass  of 
Fophistry. 

We  have  mentioned  Hume,  as  the  ablest  and  most  popu- 


HISTORY.  179 

lar  writer  of  his  class;  but  the  charge  which  we  have 
brought  against  him  is  one  to  which  all  our  most  distin- 
guished historians  are  in  some  degree  obnoxious.  Gibbon, 
in  particular,  deserves  very  severe  censure.  Of  all  the  nu- 
merous culprits,  however,  none  is  more  deeply  guilty  than 
Mr.  Mitford.  We  willingly  acknowledge  the  obligations 
which  are  due  to  his  talents  and  industry.  The  modern 
historians  of  Greece  had  been  in  the  habit  of  writing  as  if 
the  world  had  learned  nothing  new  during  the  last  sixteen 
hundred  years.  Instead  of  illustrating  the  events  which 
they  narrated,  by  the  philosophy  of  a  more  enlightened  age, 
they  judged  of  antiquity  by  itself  alone.  They  seemed  to 
think  that  notions,  long  driven  from  every  other  corner  of 
literature,  had  a  prescriptive  right  to  occupy  this  last  fast- 
ness. They  considered  all  the  ancient  historians  as  equally 
authentic.  They  scarcely  made  any  distinction  between 
him  who  related  events  at  which  he  had  himself  been  pre- 
sent, and  him  who,  five  hundred  years  after,  composed  a  phi- 
losophical romance  for  a  society  which  had,  in  the  interval, 
undergone  a  complete  change.  It  was  all  Greek,  and  all 
true  !  The  centuries  which  separated  Plutarch  from  Thucy- 
dides  seemed  as  nothing  to  men  who  lived  in  an  age  so  re- 
mote. The  distance  of  time  produced  an  error  similar  to  that 
which  is  sometimes  produced  by  distance  of  place.  There  are 
many  good  ladies  who  think  that  all  the  people  in  India  live 
together,  and  who  charge  a  friend  setting  out  for  Calcutta 
with  kind  messages  to  Bombay.  To  Rollin  and  Barthelemi, 
in  the  same  manner,  all  the  classics  were  contemporaries. 

Mr.  Mitford  certainly  introduced  great  improvements ;  he 
showed  us  that  men  who  wrote  in  Greek  and  Latin  some- 
times told  lies ;  he  showed  us  that  ancient  history  might  be 
related  in  such  a  manner  as  to  furnish  not  only  allusions  to 
school-boys,  but  important  lessons  to  statesmen.  From  that 
love  of  theatrical  effect  and  high-flown  sentiment  which  had 
poisoned  almost  every  other  work  on  the  same  subject,  his 
book  is  perfectly  free.  But  his  passion  for  a  theory  as  false, 
and  far  more  ungenerous,  led  him  substantially  to  violate 
truth  in  every  page.  Sentiments  unfavourable  to  democracy 
are  made  with  unhesitating  confidence,  and  with  the  utmost 
bitterness  of  language.  Every  charge  brought  against  a 
monarch,  or  an  aristocracy,  is  sifted  with  the  utmost  care. 


180         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

If  it  cannot  be  denied,  some  palliating  supposition  is  sug- 
gested, or  we  are  at  least  reminded  that  some  circumstance 
now  unknown  may  have  justified  what  at  present  appears 
unjustifiable.  Two  events  are  reported  by  the  same  author 
in  the  same  sentence;  their  truth  rests  on  the  same  testi- 
mony; but  the  one  supports  the  darling  hypothesis,  and 
the  other  seems  inconsistent  with  it.  The  one  is  taken  and 
the  other  is  left. 

The  practice  of  distorting  narrative  into  a  conformity  with 
theory,  is  a  vice  not  so  unfavourable  as  at  first  sight  it  may 
appear,  to  the  interest  of  political  science.  We  have  com- 
pared the  writers  who  indulge  in  it  to  advocates ;  and  we 
may  add,  that  their  conflicting  fallacies,  like  those  of  advo- 
cates, correct  each  other.  It  has  always  been  held,  in  the 
Qiost  enlightened  nations,  that  a  tribunal  will  decide  a  judi- 
cial question  most  fairly,  when  it  has  heard  two  able  men 
argue,  as  unfairly  as  possible,  on  the  two  opposite  sides  of 
it ;  and  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  this  opinion  is  just. 
Sometimes,  it  is  true,  superior  eloquence  and  dexterity  will 
make  the  worse  appear  the  better  reason  ;  but  it  is  at  least 
certain  that  the  judge  will  be  compelled  to  contemplate  the 
case  under  two  different  aspects.  It  is  certain  that  no  im- 
portant consideration  will  altogether  escape  notice. 

This  is,  at  present,  the  state  of  history.  The  poet  lau- 
reate appears  for  the  Church  of  England,  Lingard  for  the 
Church  of  Rome.  Brodie  has  moved  to  set  aside  the  ver- 
dicts obtained  by  Hume ;  and  the  cause  in  which  Mitford 
succeeded  is,  we  understand,  about  to  be  reheard.  In  the 
midst  of  these  disputes,  however,  history  proper,  if  we  may 
use  the  term,  is  disappearing.  The  high,  grave,  impartial 
summing  up  of  Thucydides  is  nowhere  to  be  found. 

While  our  historians  are  practising  all  the  arts  of  contro- 
versy, they  miserably  neglect  the  art  of  narration,  the  art 
of  interesting  the  affections  and  presenting  pictures  to  the 
imagination.  That  a  writer  may  produce  these  effects  with- 
out violating  truth,  is  sufficiently  proved  by  many  excellent 
biographical  works.  The  immense  popularity  which  well- 
written  books  of  this  kind  have  acquired,  deserves  the  se- 
rious consideration  of  historians.  Voltaire's  Charles  the 
Twelfth,  Marmontel's  Memoirs,  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson^ 
Southey's  Account  of  Nelson,  are  perused  with  delight  by 


HISTORY.  181 

the  most  frivolous  and  indolent.  Whenever  any  tolerable 
book  of  the  same  description  makes  its  appearance,  the  cir* 
culating  libraries  are  mobbed;  the  book  societies  are  in 
commotion  3  the  new  novel  lies  uncut ;  the  magazines  and 
newspapers  fill  their  columns  with  extracts.  In  the  mean 
time,  histories  of  great  empires,  written  by  men  of  eminent 
ability,  lie  unread  on  the  shelves  of  ostentatious  libraries. 

The  writers  of  history  seem  to  entertain  an  aristocratical 
contempt  for  the  writers  of  memoirs.  They  think  it  be- 
neath the  dignity  of  men  who  describe  the  revolutions  of 
nations,  to  dwell  on  the  details  which  constitute  the  charm 
of  biography.  They  have  imposed  on  themselves  a  code 
of  conventional  decencies  as  absurd  as  that  which  has  been 
the  bane  of  the  French  drama.  The  most  characteristic 
and  interesting  circumstances  are  omitted  or  softened  down, 
because,  as  we  are  told,  they  are  too  trivial  for  the  majesty 
of  history.  The  majesty  of  history  seems  to  resemble  the 
majesty  of  the  poor  King  of  Spain,  who  died  a  martyr  to 
ceremony,  because  the  proper  dignitaries  were  not  at  hand 
to  render  him  assistance. 

That  history  would  be  more  amusing  if  this  etiquette 
were  relaxed,  will,  we  suppose,  be  acknowledged.  But  would 
it  be  less  dignified  or  useful  ?  What  do  we  mean,  when  we 
say  that  one  past  event  is  important,  and  another  insigni- 
ficant ?  No  past  event  has  any  intrinsic  importance.  The 
knowledge  of  it  is  valuable  only  as  it  leads  us  to  form  just 
calculations  with  respect  to  the  future.  A  history  which 
does  not  serve  this  purpose,  though  it  may  be  filled  with 
battles,  treaties,  and  commotions,  is  as  useless  as  the  series 
of  turnpike-tickets  collected  by  Sir  Mathew  Mite. 

Let  us  suppose  that  Lord  Clarendon,  instead  of  filling 
hundreds  of  folio  pages  with  copies  of  state-papers,  in  which 
the  same  assertions  and  contradictions  are  repeated,  till  the 
reader  is  overpowered  with  weariness,  had  condescended  to 
be  the  Boswell  of  the  Long  Parliament.  Let  us  suppose 
that  he  had  exhibited  to  us  the  wise  and  lofty  self-govern- 
ment of  Hampden,  leading  while  he  seemed  to  follow,  and 
propounding  unanswerable  arguments  in  the  strongest  forms, 
with  the  modest  air  of  an  inquirer  anxious  for  information; 
the  delusions  which  misled  the  noble  spirit  of  Vane ;  the 
coarse  fanaticism  which  concealed  the  yet  loftier  genius  of 

Vol.  I.— 16 


182         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Cromwell,  destined  to  control  a  mutinous  army  and  a  fac- 
tious people,  to  abase  the  flag  of  Holland,  to  arrest  the  vic« 
torious  arms  of  Sweden,  and  to  hold  the  balance  firm  be- 
tween the  rival  monarchies  of  France  and  Spain.  Let  us 
suppose  that  he  had  made  his  Cavaliers  and  Roundheads 
talk  in  their  own  style ;  that  he  had  reported  some  of  the 
ribaldry  of  Rupert's  pages,  and  some  of  the  cant  of  Har- 
rison and  Fleetwood.  Would  not  his  work,  in  that  case, 
have  been  more  interesting  ?  Would  it  not  have  been  more 
accurate  ? 

A  history  in  which  every  particular  incident  may  be 
true,  may  on  the  whole  be  false.  The  circumstances  which 
have  most  influence  on  the  happiness  of  mankind,  the 
changes  of  manners  and  morals,  the  transition  of  commu- 
nities from  poverty  to  wealth,  from  knowledge  to  ignorance, 
from  ferocity  to  humanity — these  are,  for  the  most  part, 
noiseless  revolutions.  Their  progress  is  rarely  indicated  by 
what  historians  are  pleased  to  call  important  events.  They 
are  not  achieved  by  armies,  or  enacted  by  senates.  They 
are  sanctioned  by  no  treaties,  and  recorded  in  no  archives. 
They  are  carried  on  in  every  school,  in  every  church,  behind 
ten  thousand  counters,  at  ten  thousand  firesides.  The  upper 
current  of  society  presents  no  certain  criterion  by  which  we 
can  judge  of  the  direction  in  which  the  under  current  flows. 
We  read  of  defeats  and  victories.  But  we  know  that  nations 
may  be  miserable  amidst  victories,  and  prosperous  amidst 
defeats.  We  read  of  the  fall  of  wise  ministers,  and  of  the 
rise  of  profligate  favourites.  Rut  we  must  remember  how 
small  a  proportion  the  good  or  evil  afi'ected  by  a  single  states- 
man can  bear  to  the  good  or  evil  of  a  great  social  system. 

Bishop  Watson  compares  a  geologist  to  a  gnat  mounted 
on  an  elephant,  and  laying  down  theories  as  to  the  whole 
internal  structure  of  the  vast  animal,  from  the  phenomena 
of  the  hide.  The  comparison  is  unjust  to  the  geologists; 
but  it  is  very  applicable  to  those  historians  who  write  as  if 
the  body  politic  were  homogeneous,  who  look  only  on  the 
surface  of  aflfairs,  and  never  think  of  the  mighty  and  vari- 
ous organization  which  lies  deep  below. 

In  the  works  of  such  writers  as  these,  England,  at  the 
close  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  is  in  the  highest  state  of 
prosperity.     At  the  close  of  the  American  War,  she  is  in  a 


HISTORY.  183 

miserable  and  degraded  condition ;  as  if  the  people  were  not 
on  the  whole  as  rich,  as  well  governed,  and  as  well  educated 
at  the  latter  period  as  at  the  former.  We  have  read  books 
called  Histories  of  England,  under  the  reign  of  George  the 
Second,  in  which  the  rise  of  Methodism  is  not  even  men- 
tioned. A  hundred  years  hence,  this  breed  of  authors  will, 
we  hope,  be  extinct.  If  it  should  still  exist,  the  late  ministe- 
rial interregnum  will  be  described  in  terms  which  will  seem 
to  imply  that  all  government  was  at  an  end ;  that  the  social 
contract  was  annulled,  and  that  the  hand  of  every  man  was 
against  his  neighbour,  until  the  wisdom  and  virtue  of  the 
new  cabinet  educed  order  out  of  the  chaos  of  anarchy.  We 
are  quite  certain  that  misconceptions  as  gross  prevail  at  this 
moment,  respecting  many  important  parts  of  our  annals. 

The  effect  of  historical  reading  is  analogous,  in  many 
respects,  to  that  produced  by  foreign  travel.  The  student, 
like  the  tourist,  is  transported  into  a  new  state  of  society. 
He  sees  new  fashions.  He  hears  new  modes  of  expression. 
His  mind  is  enlarged  by  contemplating  the  wide  diversities 
of  laws,  of  morals,  and  of  manners.  But  men  may  travel 
far,  and  return  with  minds  as  contracted  as  if  they  had 
never  stirred  from  their  own  market-town.  In  the  same 
manner,  men  may  know  the  dates  of  many  battles,  and  the 
genealogies  of  many  royal  houses,  and  yet  be  no  wiser. 
Most  people  look  at  past  times  as  princes  look  at  foreign 
countries.  3Iore  than  one  illustrious  stranger  has  landed  on 
our  island  amidst  the  shouts  of  a  mob,  has  dined  with  the 
king,  has  hunted  with  the  master  of  the  stag-hounds,  has 
seen  the  guards  reviewed,  and  a  knight  of  the  garter  in- 
stalled ;  has  cantered  along  Regent  street ;  has  visited  St. 
Paul's,  and  noted  down  its  dimensions,  and  has  then  de- 
parted, thinking  that  he  has  seen  England.  He  has,  in  fact, 
seen  a  few  public  buildings,  public  men,  and  public  cere- 
monies. But  of  the  vast  and  complex  system  of  society,  of 
the  fine  shades  of  national  character,  of  the  practical  opera- 
tion of  government  and  laws,  he  knows  nothing.  He  who 
would  understand  these  things  rightly,  must  not  confine  his 
observations  to  palaces  and  solemn  days.  He  must  see 
ordinary  men  as  they  appear  in  their  ordinary  business,  and 
in  ""heir  ordinary  pleasures.  He  must  mingle  in  the  crowds 
of  ^he  exchange  and  the  coffee-house.     He  must  obtain  ad- 


184  MACAULAY's    MISCELLANE0t3S   WRITINGS. 

mittance  to  the  convivial  table  and  the  domestic  hearth.  He 
must  bear  with  vulgar  expressions.  He  must  not  shrink 
from  exploring  even  the  retreats  of  misery.  He  who 
wishes  to  understand  the  condition  of  mankind  in  former 
ages,  must  proceed  on  the  same  principle.  If  he  attends  only 
to  public  transactions,  to  wars,  congresses,  and  debates,  his  stu- 
dies will  be  as  unprofitable  as  the  travels  of  those  imperial, 
royal,  and  serene  sovereigns,  who  form  their  judgment  of 
our  island  from  having  gone  in  state  to  a  few  fine  sights,  and 
from  having  held  formal  conferences  with  a  few  great  officers. 

The  perfect  historian  is  he  in  whose  work  the  character 
and  spirit  of  an  age  is  exhibited  in  miniature.  He  relates 
no  fact,  he  attributes  no  expression  to  his  characters,  which 
is  not  authenticated  by  sufficient  testimony.  But  by  judi- 
cious selection,  rejection,  and  arrangement,  he  gives  to  truth 
those  attractions  which  have  been  usurped  by  fiction.  In 
his  narrative  a  due  subordination  is  observed ;  some  trans- 
actions are  prominent,  others  retire.  But  the  scale  on  which 
he  represents  them  is  increased  or  diminished,  not  according 
to  the  dignity  of  the  persons  concerned  in  them,  but  ac- 
cording to  the  degree  in  which  they  elucidate  the  condition 
of  society  and  the  nature  of  man.  He  shows  us  the  court, 
the  camp,  and  the  senate.  But  he  shows  us  also  the  nation. 
He  considers  no  anecdote,  no  peculiarity  of  manner,  no 
familiar  saying,  as  too  insignificant  for  his  notice,  which  is 
not  too  insignificant  to  illustrate  the  operation  of  laws,  of 
religion,  and  of  education,  and  to  mark  the  progress  of  the 
human  mind.  Men  will  not  merely  be  described,  but  will 
be  made  intimately  known  to  us.  The  changes  of  manners 
will  be  indicated,  not  merely  by  a  few  general  phrases,  or 
a  few  extracts  from  statistical  documents,  but  by  appropriate 
images  presented  in  every  line. 

If  a  man,  such  as  we  are  supposing,  should  write  the 
history  of  England,  he  would  assuredly  not  omit  the  battles, 
the  sieges,  the  negotiations,  the  seditions,  the  ministerial 
changes.  But  with  these  he  would  intersperse  the  details 
which  are  the  charm  of  historical  romances.  At  Lincoln 
Cathedral  there  is  a  beautiful  painted  window,  which  was 
made  by  an  apprentice  out  of  the  pieces  of  glass  which  had 
been  rejected  by  his  master.  It  is  so  far  superior  to  every 
other  in  the  church,  that,  according  to  the  tradition,  the  van- 


HISTORY.  •  185 

quished  artist  killed  himself  from  mortification.  Sir  Waltei 
Scott,  in  the  same  manner,  has  used  those  fragments  of 
truth  which  historians  have  scornfully  thrown  behind  them, 
in  a  manner  which  may  well  excite  their  envy.  He  has 
constructed  out  of  their  gleanings  works  which,  even  con- 
sidered as  histories,  are  scarcely  less  valuable  than  theirs. 
But  a  truly  great  historian  would  reclaim  those  materials 
which  the  novelist  has  appropriated.  The  history  of  the 
government  and  the  history  of  the  people  would  be  exhibited 
in  that  mode  in  vrhich  alone  they  can  be  exhibited  justly, 
in  inseparable  conjunction  and  intermixture.  We  should 
not  then  have  to  look  for  the  wars  and  votes  of  the  Puritans 
in  Clarendon,  and  for  their  phraseology  in  Old  Mortality; 
for  one  half  of  King  James  in  Hume,  and  for  the  other  half 
in  the  Fortunes  of  Nigel. 

The  early  part  of  our  imaginary  history  would  be  rich 
with  colouring  from  romance,  ballad,  and  chronicle.  We 
should  find  ourselves  in  the  company  of  knights  such  as 
those  of  Froissart,  and  of  pilgi'ims  such  as  those  who  rode 
with  Chaucer  from  the  Tabard.  Society  would  be  shown 
from  the  highest  to  the  lowest — from  the  royal  cloth  of 
state  to  the  den  of  the  outlaw;  from  the  throne  of  the 
legate  to  the  chimney-corner  where  the  begging  friar  re- 
galed himself.  Palmers,  minstrels,  crusaders — the  stately 
monastery,  with  the  good  cheer  in  its  refectory,  and  the 
high-mass  in  its  chapel — the  manor-house,  with  its  hunting 
and  hawking — the  tournament,  with  the  heralds  and  ladies, 
the  trumpets  and  the  cloth  of  gold — would  give  truth  and 
life  to  the  representation.  We  should  perceive,  in  a  thou- 
sand slight  touches,  the  importance  of  the  privileged  burgher, 
and  the  fierce  and  haughty  spirit  which  swelled  under  the 
collar  of  the  degraded  villain.  The  revival  of  letters  would 
not  merely  be  described  in  a  few  magnificent  periods.  We 
should  discern,  in  innumerable  particulars,  the  fermentation 
of  mind,  the  eager  appetite  for  knowledge,  which  distin- 
guished the  sixteenth  from  the  fifteenth  century.  In  the 
Reformation  we  should  see,  not  merely  a  schism  which 
changed  the  ecclesiastical  constitution  of  England  and  the 
mutual  relations  of  the  European  powers,  but  a  moral  war 
which  raged  in  every  family,  which  set  the  father  against 
the  son,  and  the  son  against  the  father,  the  mother  against 

16* 


186  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

the  daughter,  and  the  daughter  against  the  mother.  Henry 
would  be  painted  with  the  skill  of  Tacitus.  We  should 
have  the  change  of  his  character  from  his  profuse  and 
joyous  youth  to  his  savage  and  imperious  old  age.  We 
should  perceive  the  gradual  progress  of  selfish  and  tyranni- 
cal passions,  in  a  mind  not  naturally  insensible  or  ungene- 
rous ;  and  to  the  last  we  should  detect  some  remains  of  that 
open  and  noble  temper  which  endeared  him  to  a  people 
whom  he  oppressed,  struggling  with  the  hardness  of  despot- 
ism and  the  irritability  of  disease.  We  should  see  Eliza- 
beth in  all  her  weakness,  and  in  all  her  strength,  suiTOunded 
by  the  handsome  favourites  whom  she  never  trusted,  and 
the  wise  old  statesmen  whom  she  never  dismissed,  uniting 
in  herself  the  most  contradictory  qualities  of  both  her 
parents — the  coquetry,  the  caprice,  the  petty  malice  of  Anne 
— the  haughty  and  resolute  spirit  of  Henry.  We  have  no 
hesitation  in  saying,  that  a  great  artist  might  produce  a 
portrait  of  this  remarkable  woman,  at  least  as  striking  as 
that  in  the  novel  of  Kenilworth,  without  employing  a  single 
trait  not  authenticated  by  ample  testimony.  In  the  mean 
time,  we  should  see  arts  cultivated,  wealth  accumulated, 
the  conveniences  of  life  improved.  We  should  see  the 
keeps,  where  nobles,  insecure  themselves,  spread  insecurity 
around  them,  gradually  giving  place  to  the  halls  of  peaceful 
opulence,  to  the  oriels  of  Longleat,  and  the  stately  pinnacles 
of  Burleigh.  We  should  see  towns  extended,  deserts  culti- 
vated, the  hamlets  of  fishermen  turned  into  wealthy  havens, 
the  meal  of  the  peasant  improved,  and  his  hut  more  com- 
modiously  furnished.  We  should  see  those  opinions  and 
feelings  which  produced  the  great  struggle  against  the  house 
of  Stuart,  slowly  growing  up  in  the  bosom  of  private  fami- 
lies, before  they  manifested  themselves  in  parliamentary  de- 
bates. Then  would  come  the  civil  war.  Those  skirmishes, 
on  which  Clarendon  dwells  so  minutely,  would  be  told,  as 
Thucydides  would  have  told  them,  with  perspicuous  con- 
ciseness. They  are  merely  connecting  links.  But  the 
great  characteristics  of  the  age,  the  loyal  enthusiasm  of  the 
brave  English  gentry,  the  fierce  licentiousness  of  the  swear- 
ing, dicing,  drunken  reprobates,  whose  excesses  disgraced 
the  royal  cause — the  austerity  of  the  Presbyterian  Sab- 
baths in  the   city,  the   extravagance  of  the  Independent 


HISTORY.  187 

preachers  in  the  camp,  the  precise  garb,  the  severe  counte- 
nance, the  petty  scruples,  the  affected  accents,  the  absurd 
names  and  phrases  which  marked  the  Puritans — the  valour, 
the  policy,  the  public  spirit  which  lurked  beneath  these  un- 
graceful disguises — the  dreams  of  the  raving  Fifth-monarchy- 
man — the  dreams,  scarcely  less  wild,  of  the  philosophic 
republican — all  these  would  enter  into  the  representation, 
and  render  it  at  once  more  exact  and  more  striking. 

The  instruction  derived  from  history  thus  written  would 
be  of  a  vivid  and  practical  character.  It  would  be  received 
by  the  .imagination  as  well  as  by  the  reason.  It  would  be 
not  merely  traced  on  the  mind,  but  branded  into  it.  Many 
truths,  too,  would  be  learned,  which  can  be  learned  in  no 
other  manner.  As  the  history  of  states  is  generally  written, 
the  greatest  and  most  momentous  revolutions  seem  to  come 
upon  them  like  supernatural  inflictions,  without  warning  or 
cause.  But  the  fact  is,  that  such  revolutions  are  almost 
always  the  consequence  of  moral  changes,  which  have 
gradually  passed  on  the  mass  of  the  community,  and  which 
ordinarily  proceed  far  before  their  progress  is  indicated  by 
any  public  measure.  An  intimate  knowledge  of  the  do- 
mestic history  of  nations  is  therefore  absolutely  necessary  to 
the  prognosis  of  political  events.  A  narrative  defective  in 
this  respect  is  as  useless  as  a  medical  treatise  which  should 
pass  by  all  the  symptoms  attendant  on  the  early  stage  of  a 
disease,  and  mention  only  what  occurs  when  the  patient  is 
beyond  the  reach  of  remedies. 

An  historian,  such  as  we  have  been  attempting  to  describe, 
would  indeed  be  an  intellectual  prodigy.  In  his  mind, 
powers,  scarcely  compatible  with  each  other,  must  be  tern- 1^ 
pered  into  an  exquisite  harmony.  We  shall  sooner  see  ■, 
another  Shakspeare  or  another  Homer.  The  highest  ex- 
cellence to  which  any  single  faculty  can  be  brought  would  be 
less  surprising  than  such  a  happy  and  delicate  combination 
of  qualities.  Yet  the  contemplation  of  imaginary  models 
is  not  an  unpleasant  or  useless  employment  of  the  mind. 
It  cannot  indeed  produce  perfection,  but  it  produces  improve- 
ment, and  nourishes  that  generous  and  liberal  fastidiousness, 
which  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  strongest  sensibility  to 
merit,  and  which,  while  it  exalts  our  conceptions  of  the  art, 
does  not  render  us  unjust  to  the  artist. 


Ballni!i'i3  Cnnstitutional  Itstori].* 

[Edinhurgh  Review.'] 

'"  History,  at  least  in  its  state  of  imaginary  perfection,  is 
a  compound  of  poetry  and  philosophy.  It  impresses  general 
truths  on  the  mind  by  a  vivid  representation  of  particular 
characters  and  incidents.  But,  in  fact,  the  two  hostile  ele- 
ments of  which  it  consists  have  never  been  known  to  form 
a  perfect  amalgamation;  and  at  length,  in  our  own  time, 
they  have  been  completely  and  professedly  separated.  Good 
histories,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word,  we  have  not. 
But  we  have  good  historical  romances,  and  good  historical 
essays.  The  imagination  and  the  reason,  if  we  may  use  a. 
legal  metaphor,  have  made  partition  of  a  province  of  litera- 
ture of  which  they  were  formerly  seised  jyer  m^  et  pour  tout; 
and  now  they  hold  their  respective  portions  in  severalty, 
instead  of  holding  the  whole  in  common. 

To  make  the  past  present,  to  bring  the  distant  near,  to 
place  us  in  the  society  of  a  great  man,  or  on  the  eminence 
which  overlooks  the  field  of  a  mighty  battle,  to  invest  with 
the  reality  of  human  flesh  and  blood  beings  whom  we  are 
too  much  inclined  to  consider  as  personified  qualities  in  an 
allegory,  to  call  up  our  ancestors  before  us  with  all  their 
peculiarities  of  language,  manners,  and  garb,  to  show  us 
over  their  houses,  to  seat  us  at  their  tables,  to  rummage 
their  old-fashioned  wardrobes,  to  explain  the  uses  of  their 
ponderous  furniture — these  parts  of  the  duty  which  pro- 
perly belongs  to  the  historian  have  been  appropriated  by 


*  The  Constilutional  History  of  England,  from  the  Accession  of 
Henry  VII.  to  the  Death  of  George  II.  By  Heney  Hallam.  In 
2  vols.     1827. 


189 

the  historical  novelist.  On  the  other  hand,  to  extract  the 
philosophy  of  history — to  direct  our  judgment  of  events 
and  men — to  trace  the  connection  of  causes  and  effects, 
and  to  draw  from  the  occurrences  of  former  times  general 
lessons  of  moral  and  political  wisdom,  has  become  the  busi- 
ness of  a  distinct  class  of  writers. 

Of  the  two  kinds  of  composition  into  which  history  has 
been  thus  divided,  the  one  may  be  compared  to  a  map,  the 
other  to  a  painted  landscape.  The  picture,  though  it  places 
the  object  before  us,  does  not  enable  us  to  ascertain  with 
accuracy  the  form  and  dimensions  of  its  component  parts, 
the  distances,  and  the  angles.  The  map  is  not  a  work  of 
imitative  art.  It  presents  no  scene  to  the  imagination ;  but 
it  gives  us  exact  information  as  to  the  bearings  of  the  various 
points,  and  is  a  more  useful  companion  to  the  traveller  or 
the  general  than  the  painting  could  be,  though  it  were  the 
grandest  that  ever  Rosa  peopled  with  outlaws,  or  the  sweet- 
est over  which  Claude  ever  poured  the  mellow  effulgence  of 
a  setting  sun. 

It  is  remarkable  that  the  practice  of  separating  the  two 
ingredients  of  which  history  is  composed  has  become  pre- 
valent on  the  Continent,  as  well  as  in  this  country.  Italy 
has  already  produced  an  historical  novel,  of  high  merit  and 
of  still  higher  promise.  In  France,  the  practice  has  been 
carried  to  a  length  somewhat  whimsical.  M.  Sismondi 
publishes  a  grave  and  stately  history,  very  valuable,  and  a 
little  tedious.  He  then  sends  forth,  as  a  companion  to  it,  a 
novel,  in  which  he  attempts  to  give  a  lively  representation 
of  characters  and  manners.  This  course,  as  it  seems  to  us, 
has  all  the  disadvantages  of  a  division  of  labour,  and  none  of 
its  advantages.  We  understand  the  expediency  of  keeping 
the  functions  of  cook  and  coachman  distinct — the  dinner 
will  be  better  dressed,  and  the  horses  better  managed.  But 
where  the  two  situations  are  united,  as  in  the  Maitre  Jaques 
of  Moliere,  we  do  not  see  that  the  matter  is  much  mended 
by  the  solemn  form  with  which  the  pluralist  passes  from 
one  of  his  employments  to  the  other. 

'We  manage  these  things  better  in  England.  Sir  "Walter 
Scott  gives  us  a  novel,;  3Ir.  Hallam,  a  critical  and  argu- 
mentative history.  Both  are  occupied  with  the  same  mat- 
ter.    But  the  former  looks  at  it  with  the  eye  of  a  sculptor. 


190        macahlat's  miscellaneous  writings. 

His  intention  is  to  give  an  express  and  lively  image  of  its 
external  form.  The  latter  is  an  anatomist.  His  task  is  to 
dissect  the  subject  to  its  inmost  recesses,  and  to  lay  bare  be- 
fore ns  all  the  springs  of  motion,  and  all  the  causes  of  decay. 

3Ir.  Hallam  is,  on  the  whole,  tar  better  qualified  than  any 
other  writer  of  our  time  for  the  office  which  he  has  under- 
taken. He  has  great  industry  and  greai  acuteness.  His 
knowledge  is  extensive,  various,  and  profound.  His  mind 
is  equally  distinguished  by  the  amplitude  of  its  grasp,  and 
by  the  delicacy  of  its  tact.  His  speculations  have  none  of 
that  vagueness  which  is  the  common  fault  of  political  phi- 
losophy. On  the  contrary,  they  are  strikingly  practical. 
They  teach  us  not  only  the  general  rule,  but  the  mode  of 
applying  it  to  solve  particular  cases.  In  this  respect  they 
often  remind  us  of  the  Discourses  of  3Iachiavelli. 

The  style  is  sometimes  harsh,  and  sometimes  obscure. 
We  have  also  here  and  there  remarked  a  little  of  that  un- 
pleasant trick  which  Gibbon  brought  into  ftishion — the 
trick,  we  mean,  of  narrating  by  implication  and  allusion. 
Mr.  Hallam,  however,  has  an  excuse  which  Gibbon  had 
not.  His  work  is  designed  for  readers  who  are  already  ac- 
quainted with  the  ordinary  books  on  English  history,  and 
who  can  therefore  unriddle  these  little  enigmas  without 
difficulty.  The  manner  of  the  book  is,  on  the  whole,  not 
unworthy  of  the  matter.  The  language,  even  where  most 
faulty,  is  weighty  and  massive,  and  indicates  strong  sense 
in  every  line.  It  often  rises  to  an  eloquence,  not  florid  or 
impassioned,  but  high,  grave,  and  sober ;  such  as  would  be- 
come a  state-paper,  or  a  judgment  delivered  by  a  great  ma- 
gistrate, a  Somers,  or  a  D'Aguesseau. 

In  this  respect  the  character  of  Mr.  Hallam's  mind  cor- 
responds strikingly  with  that  of  his  style.  His  work  is 
eminently  judicial.  Its  whole  spirit  is  that  of  the  bench,  not 
of  the  bar.  He  sums  up  with  a  calm,  steady  impartial- 
ity, turning  neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left,  glossing  over 
nothing,  exaggerating  nothing,  while  the  advocates  on  both 
sides  are  alternately  biting  their  lips  to  hear  their  conflicting 
misstatements  and  sophisms  exposed.  On  a  general  survey, 
we  do  not  scruple  to  pronounce  the  Constitutional  History 
the  most  impartial  book  that  we  ever  read.  We  think  it  the 
more  incumbent  on  us  to  bear  this  testimony  strongly  at  first 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  191 

setting  out,  because,  in  the  course  of  our  remarks,  we  shall 
think  it  right  to  dwell  principally  on  those  parts  of  it  from 
which  we  dissent. 

There  is  one  peculiarity  about  3Ir.  Hallam,  which,  while 
it  adds  to  the  value  of  his  writings,  will,  we  fear,  take  away 
something  from  their  popularity.  He  is  less  of  a  worship- 
per than  any  historian  whom  we  can  call  to  mind.  Every 
political  sect  has  its  esoteric  and  its  exoteric  school;  its 
abstract  doctrines  for  the  initiated,  its  visible  symbols,  its 
imposing  forms,  its  mythological  fables  for  the  vulgar.  It 
assists  the  devotion  of  those  who  are  unable  to  raise  them- 
selves to  the  contemplation  of  pure  truths,  by  all  the  devices 
of  pagan  or  papal  superstition.  It  has  its  altars  and  its 
deified  heroes,  its  relics  and  its  pilgrimages,  its  canonized  mar- 
tyrs and  confessors,  its  festivals  and  its  legendary  miracles. 
Our  pious  ancestors,  we  are  told,  deserted  the  High  Altar 
of  Canterbury,  to  lay  all  their  oblations  on  the  shrine  of 
St.  Thomas.  In  the  same  manner,  the  great  and  comfortable 
doctrines  of  the  Tory  creed,  those  particularly  which  relate 
to  restrictions  on  worship  and  on  trade,  are  adored  by 
squires  and  rectors,  in  Pitt  Clubs,  under  the  name  of  a 
minister  who  was  as  bad  as  a  representative  of  the  system 
which  has  been  christened  after  him,  as  Becket  of  the  spirit 
of  the  Gospel.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  cause  for 
which  Hampden  bled  on  the  field,  and  Sidney  on  the  scaf- 
fold, is  enthusiastically  toasted  by  many  an  honest  radical, 
who  would  be  puzzled  to  explain  the  diflference  between 
Ship-money  and  the  Habeas  Corpus  act.  It  may  be  added, 
that,  as  in  religion,  so  in  politics,  few,  even  of  those  who 
are  enlightened  enough  to  comprehend  the  meaning  latent 
under  the  emblems  of  their  faith,  can  resist  the  contagion 
of  the  popular  superstition.  Often,  when  they  flatter  them- 
selves that  they  are  merely  feigning  a  compliance  with  the 
prejudices  of  the  vulgar,  they  are  themselves  under  the 
influence  of  those  very  prejudices.  It  probably  was  not 
altogether  on  grounds  of  expediency,  that  Socrates  taught 
his  followers  to  honour  the  gods  whom  the  state  honoured, 
and  beijueathed  a  cock  to  Esculapius  with  his  dying  breath. 
So  there  is  often  a  portion  of  willing  credulity  and  enthu- 
siasm in  the  veneration  which  the  most  discerning  men  pay 
to  their  political  idols.     From  the  very  nature  of  man  it 


<  i  — 


192        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

must  be  so.     The  faculty  by  which  -we  inseparably  asso- 
ciate ideas  which  have  often  been  presented  to  us  in  con- 
junction, is  not  under  the  absolute  control  of  the  will.     It 
may  be  quickened  into  morbid  activity.     It  may  be  rea- 
soned into  sluggishness.     But  in  a  certain  degree  it  will 
always  exist.      The    almost   absolute   mastery  which  Mr. 
Hallam  has  obtained  over  feelings  of  this  class  is  perfectly 
astonishing  to  us;  and  will,  we  believe,  be  not  only  asto- 
nishing, but  offensive  to  many  of  his  readers.     It  must  par- 
I    ticularly  disgust  those  people  who,  in  their  speculations  on 
I    politics,  are  not  reasoners,  but  fanciers;  whose  opinions,  even 
f    when  sincere,  are  not  produced,  according  to  the  ordinary 
i     law  of  intellectual  births,  by  induction  and  inference,  but  are 
j     equivocally  generated  by  the  heat  of  fervid  tempers  out  of 
i     the  overflowings  of  tumid  imaginations. ,   A  man  of  this  class 
is  always  in  extremes.!    He  cannot  be "  a  friend  to  liberty 
'     without  calling  for  a'  community  of  goods,  or  a  friend  to 
order  without  taking  under  his  protection  the  foulest  excesses 
I      of  tyranny.      His  admiration  oscillates  between  the  most 
.    i  worthless  of  rebels  and  the  most  worthless  of  oppressors; 
I  between  Marten,  the  scandal  of  the  High  Court  of  Justice, 
I  and  Laud,  the  scandal  of  the  Star-Chamber.     He  can  for- 
'  give  any  thing  but  temperance  and  impartiality.     He  has  a 
certain  sympathy  with  the  violence  of  his  opponents,  as  well 
as  with  that  of  his  associates.     In  every  furious  partisan  he 
sees  either  his  present  self  or  his  former  "self,  the  pensioner 
that  is,  or  the  Jacobin  that  has  been.     But  he  is  unable  to 
comprehend  a  writer  who,  steadily  attached  to  principles,  is 
indifferent  about  names  and  badges;  who  judges  of  cha- 
racters with  equable  severity,  not  altogether  untinctured  with 
cynicism,  but  free  from  the  slightest  touch  of  passion,  party 
spirit,  or  caprice. 

We  should  probably  like  Mr.  Hallam's  book  more,  if, 
instead  of  pointing  out,  with  strict  fidelity,  the  bright  points 
and  the  dark  spots  of  both  parties,  he  had  exerted  himself  to 
whitewash  the  one,  and  to  blacken  the  other.  But  we  should 
certainly  prize  it  far  less.  Eulogy  and  invective  may  be  had 
for  the  asking.  But  for  cold  rigid  justice — the  one  weight 
{  and  the  one  measure — we  know  not  where  else  we  can  look. 
No  portion  of  our  annals  has  been  more  perplexed  and 
misrepresented  by  writers  of  different  parties,  than  the  his- 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  193 

tor  J  of  the  Reformation.  In  this  labyrinth  of  falsehood 
and  sophistry,  the  guidance  of  Mr.  Hallani  is  peculiarly 
valuable.  It  is  impossible  not  to  admire  the  evenhanded 
justice  with  which  he  deals  out  castigation  to  right  and  left 
on  the  rival  persecutors. 

It  is  vehemently  maintained  by  some  writers  of  the 
present  day,  that  the  government  of  Elizabeth  persecuted 
neither  Papists  nor  Puritans  as  such;  and  occasionally  that 
the  severe  measures  which  it  adopted  were  dictated,  not  by 
religious  intolerance,  but  by  political  necessity.  Even  the 
excellent  account  of  those  times,  which  Mr.  Hallam  has 
given,  has  not  altogether  imposed  silence  on  the  authors 
of  this  fallacy.  The  title  of  the  Queen,  they  say,  was  annulled 
by  the  Pope;  her  throne  was  given  to  another;  her  subjects 
were  incited  to  rebellion;  her  life  was  menaced;  every 
Catholic  was  bound  in  conscience  to  be  a  traitor;  it  was 
therefore  against  traitors,  not  against  Catholics,  that  the 
penal  laws  were  enacted. 

That  our  readers  may  be  the  better  able  to  appreciate  the 
merits  of  this  defence,  we  will  state,  as  concisely  as  possi- 
ble, the  substance  of  some  of  these  laws. 

As  soon  as  Elizabeth  ascended  the  throne,  and  before  the 
least  hostility  to  her  government  had  been  shown  by  the 
Catholic  population,  an  act  passed,  prohibiting  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  rites  of  the  Romish  church,  on  pain  of  forfeiture 
for  the  first  offence,  a  year's  imprisonment  for  the  second, 
and  perpetual  imprisonment  for  the  third. 

A  law  was  next  made,  in  1562,  enacting  that  all  who  had 
ever  graduated  at  the  Universities,  or  received  holy  orders, 
all  lawyers,  and  all  magistrates,  should  take  the  oath  of  su- 
premacy when  tendered  to  them,  on  pain  of  forfeiture,  and 
imprisonment  during  the  royal  pleasure.  After  the  lapse 
of  three  months,  it  might  again  be  tendered  to  them ;  and, 
if  it  were  again  refused,  the  recusant  was  guilty  of  high 
treason.  A  prospective  law,  however  severe,  framed  to 
exclude  Catholics  from  the  liberal  professions,  would  have 
been  mercy  itself  compared  with  this  odious  act.  It  is  a 
retrospective  statute ;  it  is  a  retrospective  penal  statute;  it 
is  a  retrospective  penal  statute  against  a  large  class.  We 
will  not  positively  affirm  that  a  law  of  this  description  must 
always,  and  under  all  circumstances,  be  unjustifiable.     But 

Vol.  I.—  17 


194  MACAULAY'    SMISCELLANEOUS   WRITINaS 

the  presumption  against  it  is  most  violent;  nor  do  we  re» 
member  any  crisis,  either  in  our  own  history  or  in  the  his- 
tory of  any  other  country,  which  would  have  rendered  such 
a  provision  necessary.  But  in  the  present,  what  circum- 
stances called  for  extraordinary  rigour?  There  might  be 
disaffection  among  the  Catholics.  The  prohibition  of  their 
worship  would  naturally  produce  it.  But  it  is  from  their 
situation,  not  from  their  conduct;  from  the  wrongs  which 
they  had  suffered,  not  from  those  which  they  had  committed, 
that  the  existence  of  discontent  among  them  must  be  in- 
ferred. There  were  libels,  no  doubt,  and  prophecies,  and 
rumours,  and  suspicions ;  strange  grounds  for  a  law  inflict- 
ing capital  penalties,  ex  post  facto j  on  a  large  order  of  men. 

Eight  years  later,  the  bull  of  Pius  deposing  Elizabeth 
produced  a  third  law.  This  law,  to  which  alone,  as  we 
conceive,  the  defence  now  under  our  consideration  can  ap- 
ply, provides,  that  if  any  Catholic  shall  convert  a  Protestant 
to  the  Bomish  church,  they  shall  both  suffer  death,  as  for 
high  treason. 

We  believe  that  we  might  safely  content  ourselves  with 
stating  the  fact  and  leaving  it  to  the  judgment  of  every 
plain  Englishman.  Becent  controversies  have,  however, 
given  so  much  importance  to  this  subject,  that  we  will  offer 
a  few  remarks  on  it. 

In  the  first  place,  the  arguments  which  are  urged  in  favour 
of  Elizabeth  apply  with  much  greater  force  to  the  case  of 
her  sister  Mary.  The  Catholics  did  not,  at  the  time  of 
Elizabeth's  accession,  rise  in  arms  to  seat  a  pretender  on 
her  throne.  But  before  Mary  had  given  or  could  give 
provocation,  the  most  distinguished  Protestants  attempted 
to  set  aside  her  rights  in  favour  of  the  Lady  Jane.  That  at- 
tempt, and  the  subsequent  insurrection  of  Wyatt,  furnished 
at  least  as  good  a  plea  for  the  burning  of  Protestants  as  the 
conspiracies  against  Elizabeth  furnish  for  the  hanging  and 
cmbowelling  of  Papists. 

The  fact  is,  that  both  pleas  are  worthless  alike.  If  such 
arguments  are  to  pass  current,  it  will  be  easy  to  prove  that 
there  was  never  such  a  thing  as  religious  persecution  since 
the  creation.  For  there  never  was  a  religious  persecution 
in  which  some  odious  crime  was  not  justly  or  unjustly  said 
to  be  obviously  deducible  from  the  doctrines  of  the  perse- 


195 

cuted  party.  We  might  say  that  the  Caesars  did  not  per- 
secute the  Christians;  that  they  only  punished  men  who 
were  charged,  rightly  or  wrongly,  with  burning  Rome,  and 
with  committing  the  foulest  abominations  in  their  assemblies; 
that  the  refusal  to  throw  frankincense  on  the  altar  of  Jupiter 
was  not  the  crime,  but  only  evidence  of  the  crime.  "We 
might  say  that  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew  was  in- 
tended to  extirpate,  not  a  religious  sect,  but  a  political  party. 
For,  beyond  all  doubt,  the  proceedings  of  the  Huguenots, 
from  the  conspiracy  of  Amboise  to  the  battle  of  Moncou- 
tour,  had  given  much  more  trouble  to  the  French  monarchy 
than  the  Catholics  have  ever  given  to  England  since  the 
Reformation;  and  that,  too,  with  much  less  excuse. 

The  true  distinction  is  perfectly  obvious.  To  punish  a 
man  because  he  has  committed  a  crime,  or  is  believed, 
though  unjustly,  to  have  committed  a  crime,  is  not  persecu- 
tion. To  punish  a  man  because  we  infer  from  the  nature 
of  some  doctrine  which  he  holds,  or  from  the  conduct  of 
other  persons  who  hold  the  same  doctrines  with  him,  that 
he  will  commit  a  crime,  is  persecution;  and  is,  in  every 
case,  foolish  and  wicked. 

When  Elizabeth  put  Ballard  and  Babington  to  death,  she 
was  not  persecuting.  Nor  should  we  have  accused  her 
government  of  persecution  for  passing  any  law,  however 
severe,  against  overt  acts  of  sedition.  But  to  argue,  that, 
because  a  man  is  a  Catholic,  he  must  think  it  right  to  murder 
an  heretical  sovereign,  and  that,  because  he  thinks  it  right, 
he  will  attempt  to  do  it,  and  then  to  found  on  this  con- 
clusion a  law  for  punishing  him  as  if  he  had  done  it,  is 
plain  persecution. 

If,  indeed,  all  men  reasoned  in  the  same  manner  on  the 
same  data,  and  always  did  what  they  thought  it  their  duty  to 
do,  this  mode  of  dispensing  punishment  might  be  extremely 
judicious.  But  gs  people  who  agree  about  premises  often 
disagree  about  conclusions,  and  as  no  man  in  the  world  acts  ^ 
up  to  his  own  standard  of  right,  there  are  two  enormous 
gaps  in  the  logic  by  which  alone  penalties  for  opinions  can 
be  defended.  The  doctrine  of  reprobation,  in  the  judgment 
of  many  very  able  men,  follows  by  syllogistic  necessity 
from  the  doctrine  of  election.  Others  conceive  that  the 
Antiuomian   and  Manichean  heresies  directly  follow  from 


196         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

the  doctrine  of  reprobation ;  and  it  is  very  generally  thought 
that  licentiousness  and  cruelty  of  the  worst  description  are 
likely  to  be  the  fruits,  as  they  often  have  been  the  fruits,  of 
Antinomian  and  Manichean  opinions.  This  chain  of  reason- 
ing, we  think,  is  as  perfect  in  all  its  parts  as  that  which 
makes  out  a  Papist  to  be  necessarily  a  traitor.  Yet  it  would 
be  rather  a  strong  measure  to  hang  the  Calvinists,  on  the 
ground  that  if  they  were  spared,  they  would  infallibly 
commit  all  the  atrocities  of  Matthias  and  Knipperdoling. 
For,  reason  the  matter  as  we  may,  experience  shows  us  that 
a  man  may  believe  in  election  without  believing  in  reproba- 
tion, that  he  may  believe  in  reprobation  without  being  an 
Antinomian,  and  that  he  may  be  an  Antinomian  without 
being  a  bad  citizen.  Man,  in  short,  is  so  inconsistent  a 
creature,  that  it  is  impossible  to  reason  from  his  belief  to  his 
conduct,  or  from  one  part  of  his  belief  to  another. 

We  do  not  believe  that  every  Englishman  who  was  re- 
conciled to  the  Catholic  church  would,  as  a  necessary  con- 
sequence, have  thought  himself  justified  in  deposing  or 
assassinating  Elizabeth.  It  is  not  sufficient  to  say  that  the 
convert  must  have  acknowledged  the  authority  of  the  Pope; 
and  that  the  Pope  had  issued  a  bull  against  the  Queen. 
"VVe  know  through  what  strange  loopholes  the  human  mind 
contrives  to  escape,  when  it  wishes  to  avoid  a  disagreeable 
inference  from  an  admitted  proposition.  We  know  how 
long  the  Jansenists  contrived  to  believe  the  Pope  infallible 
in  matters  of  doctrine,  and  at  the  same  time  to  believe 
doctrines  which  he  pronounced  to  be  heretical.  Let  it  pass, 
however,  that  every  Catholic  in  the  kingdom  thought  that 
Elizabeth  might  be  lawfully  murdered.  Still  the  old  maxim, 
that  what  is  the  business  of  everybody  is  the  business  of 
nobody,  is  particularly  likely  to  hold  good  in  a  case  in 
which  a  cruel  death  is  the  almost  inevitable  consequence 
of  making  any  attempt. 

Of  the  ten  thousand  clergymen  of  the  Church  of  England, 
there  is  scarcely  one  who  would  not  say,  that  a  man  who 
should  leave  his  country  and  friends  to  preach  the  gospel 
among  savages,  and  who  should,  after  labouring  indefatiga- 
bly,  without  any  hope  of  reward,  terminate  his  life  by  martyr- 
dom, would  deserve  thc'warmest  admiration.  Yet  we  doubt 
whether  ten  of  the  ten  thousand  ever  thought  of  going  on 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  197 

such  an  expedition.  "Why  should  we  suppose  that  consci- 
entious motives,  feeble  as  they  are  constantly  found  to  bo 
in  a  good  cause,  should  be  omnipotent  for  evil  ?  Doubtless 
there  was  many  a  jolly  Popish  priest  in  the  old  manor- 
houses  of  the  northern  counties,  who  would  have  admitted, 
in  theory,  the  deposing  power  of  the  Pope,  but  who  would 
not  have  been  ambitious  to  be  stretched  on  the  rack,  even 
though  it  were  to  be  used,  according  to  the  benevolent  pro- 
viso of  Lord  Burleigh,  ^^as  charitably  as  such  a  thing  can 
be  'y'  or  to  be  hanged,  drawn,  and  quartered,  even  though, 
by  that  rare  indulgence  which  the  Queen,  of  her  especial 
grace,  certain  knowledge,  and  mere  motion,  sometimes  ex- 
tended to  very  mitigated  cases,  he  were  allowed  a  fair  time 
to  choke  before  the  hangman  began  to  grabble  in  his  en- 
trails. 

But  the  laws  passed  against  the  Puritans  had  not  even  the 
wretched  excuse  which  we  have  been  considering.  In  their 
case,  the  cruelty  was  equal;  the  danger  infinitely  less.  In 
fact,  the  danger  was  created  solely  by  the  cruelty.  But  it 
is  superfluous  to  press  the  argument.  By  no  artifice  of  in-V 
genuity  can  the  stigma  of  persecution,  the  worst  blemish  of  •' 
the  English  Church,  be  efiaced  or  patched  over.  Her  doc- 
trines, we  well  know,  do  not  tend  to  intolerance.  She  ad- 
mits the  possibility  of  salvation  out  of  her  own  pale.  But 
this  circumstance,  in  itself  honourable  to  her,  aggravates  the 
sin  and  the  shame  of  those  who  persecuted  in  her  name.  Do- 
minic and  De  Monfort  did  not  at  least  murder  and  torture 
for  difi'erences  of  opinion  which  they  considered  as  trifling. 
It  was  to  stop  an  infection  which,  as  they  believed,  hurried 
to  perdition  every  soul  which  it  seized,  that  they  employed 
their  fire  and  steel.  The  measures  of  the  English  govern- 
ment with  respect  to  the  Papists  and  Puritans  sprang  from  a 
widely  difi"erent  principle.  If  those  who  deny  that  the  sup- 
porters of  the  Established  Church  were  guilty  of  religious  per- 
secution, mean  only  that  they  were  not  influenced  by  religious 
motives,  we  perfectly  agree  with  them.  Neither  the  penal 
code  of  Elizabeth,  nor  the  more  hateful  system  by  which 
Charles  the  Second  attempted  to  force  Episcopacy  on  the 
Scotch,  had  an  origin  so  noble.  Their  cause  is  to  be  sought 
in  some  circumstances  which  attended  the  Reformation  in 
England — circumstances  of  which  the  efi"ects  long  continued 

17* 


198        macaulay's  miscellaneous  ^vritings. 

to  be  felt,  and  may  in  some  degree  be  traced  even  at  the 
present  day. 

In  Germany,  in  France,  in  Switzerland,  and  in  Scotland, 
the  contest  against  the  Papal  power  was  essentially  a  reli- 
gious contest.  In  all  these  countries,  indeed,  the  cause  of 
the  Eeformation,  like  every  other  great  cause,  attracted  to 
itself  many  supporters,  influenced  by  no  conscientious  prin- 
ciple, many  who  quitted  the  Established  Church  only  be- 
cause they  thought  her  in  danger,  many  who  were  weary  of 
her  restraints,  and  many  who  were  greedy  for  her  spoils. 
But  it  was  not  by  these  adherents  that  the  separation  was 
there  conducted.  They  were  welcome  auxiliaries;  their  sup- 
port was  too  often  purchased  by  unworthy  compliances ;  but, 
however  exalted  in  rank  or  power,  they  were  not  the  leaders 
in  the  enterprise.  Men  of  a  widely  difi'erent  description, 
men  who  redeemed  great  infirmities  and  errors  by  sincerity, 
disinterestedness,  energy,  and  courage ;  men  who,  with  many 
of  the  vices  of  revolutionary  chiefs  and  of  polemic  divines, 
united  some  of  the  highest  qualities  of  apostles,  were  the 
real  directors.  They  might  be  violent  in  innovation,  and 
scurrilous  in  controversy.  They  might  sometimes  act  with 
inexcusable  severity  towards  opponents,  and  sometimes  con- 
nive disreputably  at  the  vices  of  powerful  allies.  But  fear 
was  not  in  them,  nor  hypocrisy,  nor  avarice,  nor  any  petty 
selfishness.  Their  one  great  object  was  the  demolition  of 
the  idols,  and  the  purification  of  the  sanctuary.  If  they 
were  too  indulgent  to  the  feelings  of  eminent  men,  from 
whose  patronage  they  expected  advantage  to*  the  church, 
they  never  flinched  before  persecuting  tyrants  and  hostile 
armies.  If  they  set  the  lives  of  others  at  naught  in  com- 
parison of  their  doctrines,  they  were  equally  ready  to  throw 
away  their  own.  Such  were  the  authors  of  the  great  schism 
on  the  Continent  and  in  the  northern  part  of  this  island. 
The  Elector  of  Saxony  and  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse,  the 
Prince  of  Conde  and  the  King  of  Navarre,  Moray  and  Mor- 
ton, might  espouse  the  Protestant  opinions,  or  might  pretend 
to  espouse  them ;  but  it  was  from  Luther,  from  Calvin,  from 
Knox,  that  the  lieformation  took  its  character. 

England  has  no  such  names  to  show;  not  that  she  wanted 
men  of  sincere  piety,  or  deep  learning,  of  steady  and  ad- 
adventurous  courage.   But  these  were  thrown  into  the  back- 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  199 

ground.  Elsewhere  men  of  this  character  were  the  prin- 
cipals. Here  they  acted  a  secondary  part.  Elsewhere 
worldliness  was  the  tool  of  zeal.  Here  zeal  was  the  tool 
of  worldliness.  A  king,  whose  character  may  be  best  de- 
scribed by  saying  that  he  was  despotism  itself  personified, 
unprincipled  ministers,  a  rapacious  aristocracy,  a  servile 
parliament — such  were  the  instruments  by  which  England 
was  delivered  from  the  yoke  of  Rome.  The  work  which 
had  been  begun  by  Henry,  the  murderer  of  his  wives,  was 
continued  by  Somerset,  the  murderer  of  his  brother,  and 
completed  by  Elizabeth,  the  murderer  of  her  guest.  Sprung 
from  brutal  passion,  nurtured  by  selfish  policy,  the  Reforma- 
tion in  England  displayed  little  of  what  had  in  other  coun- 
tries distinguiihed  it — unflinching  and  unsparing  devotion, 
boldness  of  speech,  and  singleness  of  eye.  These  were  in- 
deed to  be  found ;  but  it  was  in  the  lower  ranks  of  the 
party  which  opposed  the  authority  of  Rome,  in  such  men 
as  Hooper,  Latimer,  Rodgers,  and  Taylor.  Of  those  who 
had  any  important  share  in  bringing  the  alteration  about, 
the  excellent  Ridley  was  perhaps  the  only  person  who  did 
not  consider  it  as  a  mere  political  job.  Even  Ridley  did 
not  play  a  very  prominent  part.  Among  the  statesmen 
and  prelates  who  principally  gave  the  tone  to  the  religious 
changes,  there  is  one,  and  one  only,  whose  conduct  partiality 
itself  can  attribute  to  any  other  than  interested  motives.  It 
is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  his  character  should  have  been 
the  subject  of  fierce  controversy.  We  need  not  say  that 
we  speak  of  Cranmer. 

Mr.  Hallam  has  been  severely  censured  for  saying,  with 
his  usual  placid  severity,  that,  ^'if  we  weigh  the  character  of 
this  prelate  in  an  equal  balance,  he  will  appear  far  indeed 
removed  from  the  turpitude  imputed  to  him  by  his  enemies; 
yet  not  entitled  to  any  extraordinary  veneration."  We  will 
venture  to  expand  the  sense  of  Mr.  Hallam,  and  to  comment 
on  it  thus :  If  we  consider  Cranmer  merely  as  a  statesman, 
he  will  not  appear  a  much  worse  man  than  Wolsey,  Gardi- 
ner, Cromwell,  or  Somerset  But  when  an  attempt  is  made 
to  set  him  up  as  a  saint,  it  is  scarcely  possible  for  any  man 
of  sense,  who  knows  the  history  of  the  times  well,  to  pre- 
serve his  gravity     If  the  memory  of  the  archbishop  had 


200  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

been  left  to  find  its  own  place,  he  would  soon  have  been  lost 
among  the  crowd  which  is  mingled 

"A  quel  cattivo  coro 
Degli'  angeli,  che  non  furon  ribelli, 
NtJ  fur  fedeli  a  Dio,  ma  per  se  furo." 

And  the  only  notice  which  it  would  have  been  necessary  to 
take  of  his  name,  would  have  been 

"Non  ragioniam  di  lui;  ma  guarda,  e  passa." 

But  when  his  admirers  challenge  for  him  a  place  in  the 
noble  army  of  martyrs,  his  claims  require  fuller  discussion. 

The  shameful  origin  of  his  history,  common  enough  in 
the  scandalous  chronicles  of  courts,  seems  strangely  out  of 
place  in  a  hagiology.  Cranmer  rose  into  favour  by  serving 
Henry  in  a  disgraceful  affair  of  his  first  divorce.  He  pro- 
moted the  marriage  of  Anne  Boleyn  with  the  king.  On  a 
frivolous  pretence,  he  pronounced  it  null  and  void.  On  a  pre- 
tence, if  possible,  still  more  frivolous,  he  dissolved  the  ties 
which  bound  the  shameless  tja-ant  to  Anne  of  Cleves.  He 
attached  himself  to  Cromwell,  while  the  fortunes  of  Crom- 
well flourished.  He  voted  for  cutting  off  his  head  without 
a  trial,  when  the  tide  of  royal  favour  turned.  He  conformed 
backwards  and  forwards  as  the  king  changed  his  mind. 
While  Henry  lived,  he  assisted  in  condemning  to  the  flames 
those  who  denied  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  When 
Henry  died,  he  found  out  that  the  doctrine  was  false.  He 
was,  however,  not  at  a  loss  for  people  to  burn.  The  autho- 
rity of  his  station,  and  of  his  gray  hairs,  was  employed  to 
overcome  the  disgust  with  which  an  intelligent  and  virtuous 
child  regarded  persecution. 

Intolerance  is  always  bad.  But  the  sanguinary  intole- 
rance of  a  man  who  thus  wavered  in  his  creed,  excites  a 
loathing  to  which  it  is  difficult  to  give  vent  withcnt  calling 
foul  names.  Equally  false  to  political  and  to  religious  obli- 
gations, he  was  first  the  tool  of  Somerset,  and  then  the  tool 
of  Northumberland.  When  the  former  wished  to  put  his 
own  brother  to  death,  without  even  the  form  of  a  trial,  he 
found  a  ready  instrument  in  Cranmer.  In  spite  of  the  canoe 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  201 

law,  which  forbade  a  churchman  to  take  any  part  in  matters 
of  blood,  the  archbishop  signed  the  warrant  for  the  atro- 
cious sentence.  When  Somerset  had  been  in  his  turn  de- 
stroyed, his  destroyer  received  the  support  of  Cranmer  in 
his  attempt  to  change  the  course  of  the  succession. 

The  apology  made  for  him  by  his  admirers  only  renders 
his  conduct  more  contemptible.  He  complied,  it  is  said, 
against  his  better  judgment,  because  he  could  not  resist  the 
entreaties  of  Edward.  A  holy  prelate  of  sixty,  one  would 
think,  might  be  better  employed  by  the  bedside  of  a  dying 
child,  than  committing  crimes  at  the  request  of  his  disciple. 
If  he  had  shown  half  as  much  firmness  when  Edward  re- 
quested him  to  commit  treason,  as  he  had  before  shown 
when  Edward  requested  him  not  to  commit  murder,  he 
might  have  saved  the  country  from  one  of  the  greatest  mis- 
fortunes that  it  ever  underwent.  He  became,  from  whatever 
motive,  the  accomplice  of  the  worthless  Dudley.  The  vir- 
tuous scruples  of  another  young  and  amiable  mind  were  to 
be  overcome.  As  Edward  had  been  forced  into  persecution, 
Jane  was  to  be  seduced  into  usurpation.  No  transaction  in 
our  annals  is  more  unjustifiable  than  this.  If  an  hereditary 
title  were  to  be  respected,  Mary  possessed  it.  If  a  parlia- 
mentary title  were  preferable,  Mary  possessed  that  also.  If 
the  interest  of  the  Protestant  religion  required  a  departure 
from  the  ordinary  rule  of  succession,  that  interest  would 
have  been  best  served  by  raising  Elizabeth  to  the  throne. 
If  the  foreign  relations  of  the  kingdom  were  considered,  still 
stronger  reasons  might  be  found  for  preferring  Elizabeth  to 
Jane.  There  was  great  doubt  whether  Jane  or  the  Queen 
of  Scotland  had  the  better  claim ;  and  that  doubt  would, 
in  all  probability,  have  produced  a  war,  both  with  Scotland 
and  with  France,  if  the  project  of  Northumberland  had  not 
been  blasted  in  its  infancy.  That  Elizabeth  had  a  better 
claim  than  the  Queen  of  Scotland  was  indisputable.  To 
the  part  which  Cranmer,  and  unfortunately  some  better  men 
than  Cranmer,  took  in  this  most  reprehensible  scheme, 
much  of  the  severity  with  which  the  Protestants  were  after- 
wards treated  must  in  fairness  be  ascribed. 

The  plot  failed;  popery  triumphed;  and  Cranmer  re- 
canted. Most  people  look  on  his  recantation  as  a  single 
blemish  on  an  honourable  life,  the  frailty  of  an  unguarded 


202        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

moment.  But,  in  fact,  it  was  in  strict  accordance  with  the 
system  on  which  he  had  constantly  acted.  It  was  part  of 
a  regular  habit.  It  was  not  the  first  recantation  that  he  had 
made;  and,  in  all  probability,  if  it  had  answered  its  pur- 
pose, it  would  not  have  been  the  last.  We  do  not  blame 
him  for  not  choosing  to  be  burned  alive.  It  is  no  very  se- 
vere reproach  to  any  person,  that  he  does  not  possess  heroic 
fortitude.  But  surely  a  man  who  liked  the  fire  so  little, 
should  have  had  some  sympathy  for  others.  A  persecutor 
who  inflicts  nothing  which  he  is  not  ready  to  endure,  de- 
serves some  respect.  But  when  a  man,  who  loves  his  doc- 
trines more  than  the  lives  of  his  neighbours,  loves  his  own 
little  finger  better  than  his  doctrines, 'a  very  simple  argu- 
ment, a  fortiori^  will  enable  us  to  estimate  the  amount  of 
his  benevolence. 

But  his  martyrdom,  it  is  said,  redeemed  every  thing.  It 
is  extraordinary  that  so  much  ignorance  should  exist  on  this 
subject.  The  fact  is,  that  if  a  martyr  be  a  man  who  chooses 
to  die  rather  than  to  renounce  his  opinions,  Cranmer  was  no 
more  a  martyr  than  Dr.  Dodd.  He  died  solely  because  he 
could  not  help  it.  He  never  retracted  his  recantation  till 
he  found  he  had  made  it  in  vain.  The  queen  was  fully  re- 
solved that,  Catholic  or  Protestant,  he  should  burn.  Then 
he  spoke  out,  as  people  generally  speak  out  when  they  are 
at  the  point  of  death,  and  have  nothing  to  hope  or  to  fear 
on  earth.  If  Mary  had  suffered  him  to  live,  we  suspect  that 
he  would  have  heard  mass,  and  received  absolution,  like  a 
good  Catholic,  till  the  accession  of  Elizabeth;  and  that  he 
would  then  have  purchased,  by  another  apostasy,  the  power 
of  burning  men  better  and  braver  than  himself. 

We  do  not  mean,  however,  to  represent  him  as  a  monster 
of  wickedness.  He  was  not  wantonly  cruel  or  treacherous. 
He  was  merely  a  supple,  timid,  interested  courtier,  in  times 
of  frequent  and  violent  change.  That  which  has  always 
been  represented  as  his  distinguishing  virtue,  the  facility 
with  which  he  forgave  his  enemies,  belongs  to  the  character. 
Those  of  his  class  are  never  vindictive,  and  never  grateful. 
A  present  interest  efiiices  past  services  and  past  injuries 
from  their  minds  together.  Their  only  object  is  self-pre- 
servation ;  and  for  this  they  conciliate  those  who  wrong  them, 
just  as  they  abandon  those  who  serve  them.     Before  we 


hixlam's  constitutional  history.  203 

exto.  a  man  for  his  forgiving  temper,  we  should  inquire 
whether  he  is  above  revenge,  or  below  it. 

Somerset,  with  as  little  principle  as  his  coadjutor,  had  a 
firmer  and  more  commanding  mmd.  Of  Henrj,  an  orthodox 
Catholic,  excepting  that  he  chose  to  be  his  own  pope,  and 
of  Elizabeth,  who  certainly  had  no  objection  to  the  theology 
of  Rome,  we  need  say  nothing.  But  these  four  persons  were 
the  great  authors  of  the  English  Reformation.  Three  of 
them  had  a  direct  interest  in  the  extension  of  the  royal  pre- 
rogative. The  fourth  was  the  ready  tool  of  any  who  could 
frighten  him.  It  is  not  difficult  to  see  from  what  motives, 
and  on  what  plan,  such  persons  would  be  inclined  to  remodel 
the  Church.  The  scheme  was  merely  to  rob  the  Babylonian 
enchantress  of  her  ornaments,  to  transfer  the  full  cup  of  her 
sorceries  to  other  hands,  spilling  as  little  as  possible  by  the 
way.  The  Catholic  doctrines  and  rites  were  to  be  retained 
in  the  Church  of  England ;  but  the  king  was  to  exercise  the 
control  which  formerly  belonged  to  the  Roman  pontifi".  In 
this,  Henry  for  a  time  succeeded.  The  extraordinary  force 
of  his  character,  the  fortunate  situation  in  which  he  stood 
with  respect  to  foreign  powers,  and  the  vast  resources  which 
the  suppression  of  the  monasteries  placed  at  his  disposal, 
enabled  him  to  oppress  both  the  religious  factions  equally. 
He  punished  with  impartial  severity  those  who  renounced 
the  doctrines  of  Rome,  and  those  who  acknowledged  her 
jurisdiction.  The  basis,  however,  on  which  he  attempted  to 
establish  his  power,  was  too  narrow.  It  would  have  been 
impossible  even  for  him  long  to  persecute  both  persuasions. 
Even  under  his  reign  there  had  been  insurrections  on  the 
part  of  the  Catholics,  and  signs  of  a  spirit  which  was  likely 
soon  to  produce  insurrection  on  the  part  of  the  Protestants. 
It  was  plainly  neeessary,  therefore,  that  the  governmerit 
should  form  an  alliance  with  one  or  the  other  side.  To 
recognise  the  Papal  supremacy,  would  have  been  to  abandon 
its  whole  design.  Reluctantly  and  sullenly  it  at  last  joined 
the  Protestants.  In  forming  this  junction,  its  object  was  to 
procure  as  much  aid  as  possible  for  its  selfish  undertaking, 
and  to  make  the  smallest  possible  concessions  to  Mie  spirit  ; 
of  religious  innovation.  , 

•   From  this  compromise  the  Church  of  England  sprung.  : 
In  many  respects,  indeed,  it  has  been  well  for  her,  that  in 


204  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

an  age  of  exuberant  zeal,  her  principal  founders  were  mere 
politicians.  To  this  circumstance  she  owes  her  moderate 
articles,  her  decent  ceremonies,  her  noble  and  pathetic 
liturgy.  Her  worship  is  not  disfigured  by  mummery ;  yet 
she  has  preserved,  in  a  far  greater  degree  than  any  of  her 
Protestant  sisters,  that  art  of  striking  the  senses  and  filling 
the  imagination  in  which  the  Catholic  Church  so  eminently 
excels.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  she  continued  to  be,  for 
more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  the  servile  handmaid 
of  monarchy,  the  steady  enemy  of  public  liberty.  The 
divine  right  of  kings  and  the  duty  of  passively  obeying  all 
their  commands,  were  her  favourite  tenets.  She  held  them 
firmly  through  times  of  oppression,  persecution,  and  licen- 
tiousness, while  law  was  trampled  down,  while  judgment 
was  perverted,  while  the  people  were  eaten  as  though  they 
were  bread.  Once,  and  but  once — for  a  moment,  and  but 
for  a  moment — when  her  own  dignity  and  property  were 
touched,  she  forgot  to  practise  the  submission  which  she 
had  taught. 

Elizabeth  clearly  discerned  the  advantages  which  were 
to  be  derived  from  a  close  connection  between  the  monarchy 
and  the  priesthood.  At  the  time  of  her  accession,  indeed, 
she  evidently  meditated  a  partial  reconciliation  with  Rome; 
and  throughout  her  whole  life,  she  leaned  strongly  to  some 
of  the  most  obnoxious  parts  of  the  Catholic  system.  But 
her  imperious  temper,  her  keen  sagacity,  and  her  peculiar 
situation,  soon  led  her  to  attach  herself  completely  to  a 
church  which  was  all  her  own.  On  the  same  principle  on 
which  she  joined  it,  she  attempted  to  drive  all  her  people 
within  its  pale  by  persecution.  She  supported  it  by  severe 
penal  laws,  not  because  she  thought  conformity  to  its  disci- 
pline necessary  to  salvation,  but  because  it  was  the  fastness 
which  arbitrary  power  was  making  strong  for  itself;  because 
she  expected  a  more  profound  obedience  from  those  who  saw 
in  her  both  their  civil  and  their  ecclesiastical  head,  than 
from  those  who,  like  the  Papists,  ascribed  spiritual  authority 
to  the  Pope;  or  from  those  who,  like  some  of  the  Puritans, 
ascribed  it  only  to  Heaven.  To  dissent  from  her  establish- 
ment was  to  dissent  from  an  institution  founded  with  an 
express  view  to  the  maintenance  and  extension  of  the  royal 
prerogative. 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  205 

This  great  queen  and  her  successors,  by  considering  con- 
formity and  loyalty  as  identical,  at  length  made  them  so. 
With  respect  to  the  Catholics,  indeed,  the  rigour  of  persecu- 
tion abated  after  her  death.  James  soon  found  that  they 
were  unable  to  injure  him;  and  that  the  animosity  which 
the  Puritan  party  felt  towards  them,  drove  them  of  neces- 
sity to  take  refuge  under  his  throne.  During  the  subsequent 
conflict,  their  fault  was  any  thing  but  disloyalty.  On  the 
other  hand,  James  hated  the  Puritans  with  far  more  than 
the  hatred  of  Elizabeth.  Her  aversion  to  them  was  politi- 
cal ;  his  was  personal.  The  sect  had  plagued  him  in  Scot- 
land, where  he  was  weak;  and  he  was  determined  to  be  even 
with  them  in  England,  where  he  was  powerful.  Persecu- 
tion gradually  changed  a  sect  into  a  faction.  That  there 
was  any  thing  in  the  religious  opinions  of  the  Puritans  which 
rendered  them  hostile  to  monarchy,  has  never  been  proved 
to  our  satisfaction.  After  our  civil  contests,  it  became  the 
fashion  to  say  that  Presbyterianism  was  connected  with 
republicanism;  just  as  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  say,  since 
the  time  of  the  French  revolution,  that  infidelity  is  connect- 
ed with  republicanism.  It  is  perfectly  true,  that  a  church 
constituted  on  the  Calvinistic  model  will  not  strengthen  the 
hands  of  the  sovereign  so  much  as  a  hierarchy,  which  con- 
sists of  several  ranks,  differing  in  dignity  and  emolument, 
and  of  which  all  the  members  are  constantly  looking  to 
the  government  for  promotion.  But  experience  has  clearly 
shown  that  a  Calvinistic  church,  like  every  other  church,  is 
disaffected  when  it  is  persecuted,  quiet  when,  it  is  tolerated, 
and  actively  loyal  when  it  is  favoured  and  cherished.  Scot- 
land has  had  a  Presbyterian  establishment  during  a  century 
and  a  half;  yet  her  General  Assembly  has  not,  during  that 
period,  given  half  so  much  trouble  to  the  government  as  the 
Convocation  of  the  Church  of  England  gave  to  it  during  the 
thirty  years  which  followed  the  Revolution.  That  James 
and  Charles  should  have  been  mistaken  on  this  point,  is  not 
surprising.  But  we  are  astonished,  we  must  confess,  when 
writers  of  our  own  time,  men  who  have  before  them  the 
proof  of  what  toleration  can  effect,  men  who  may  see  with 
their  own  eyes  that  the  Presbyterians  are  no  such  mon- 
sters when  government  is  wise  enough  to  let  them  alone, 
should  defend  the  old  persecutions,  on  the  ground  that 
Vol.  I.— 18 


206 

they  were  indispensable  to  the  safety  of  the  church  and  th^ 
throne. 

How  persecution  protects  churches  and  thrones  was  soon 
made  manifest,  A  systematic  political  opposition,  vehement, 
daring,  and  inflexible,  sprang  from  a  schism  about  trifles, 
altogether  unconnected  with  the  real  interests  of  religion  or 
of  the  state.  Before  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  it 
began  to  show  itself.  It  broke  forth  on  the  question  of  the 
monopolies.  Even  the  imperial  lioness  was  compelled  to 
abandon  her  prey,  and  slowly  and  fiercely  to  recede  before 
the  assailants.  The  spirit  of  liberty  grew  with  the  growing 
wealth  and  intelligence  of  the  people.  The  feeble  struggles 
and  insults  of  James  irritated  instead  of  suppressing  it ;  and 
the  events  which  immediately  followed  the  accession  of  his 
son,  portended  a  contest  of  no  common  severity,  between 
a  king  resolved,  to  be  absolute,  and  a  people  resolved  to  be 
free. 

The  famous  proceedings  of  the  third  parliament  of  Charles, 
and  the  tyrannical  measures  which  followed  its  dissolution, 
are  extremely  well  described  by  Mr.  Hallam.  No  writer, 
we  think,  has  shown  in  so  clear  and  satisfactory  a  manner, 
that  at  that  time  the  government  entertained  a  fixed  purpose 
of  destroying  the  old  parliamentary  constitution  of  England, 
or  at  least  of  reducing  it  to  a  mere  shadow.  We  hasten, 
however,  to  a  part  of  his  work,  which,  though  it  abounds  in 
valuable  information,  and  in  remarks  well  deserving  to  be 
attentively  considered ;  and  though  it  is,  like  the  rest,  evi- 
dently written  in  a  spirit  of  perfect  impartiality,  appears  to 
us,  in  many  points,  objectionable. 

We  pass  to  the  year  1640.  The  fate  of  the  short  parlia- 
ment held  in  that  year  already  indicated  the  views  of  the 
king.  That  a  parliament  so  moderate  in  feeling  should  have 
met  after  so  many  years  of  oppression,  is  truly  wonderful. 
Hyde  extols  its  loyal  and  conciliatory  spirit ;  its  conduct, 
we  are  told,  made  the  excellent  Falkland  in  love  with  the 
very  name  of  parliament.  We  think,  indeed,  with  Oliver 
St.  John,  that  its  moderation  was  carried  too  jfar,  and  that 
the  times  required  sharper  and  more  decided  councils.  It 
was  fortunate,  however,  that  the  king  had  another  opportu- 
nity of  showing  that  hatred  of  the  liberties  of  his  subjects 
which  was  the  ruling  principle  of  all  his  conduct.     The  sole 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  207 

crime  of  this  assembly  was  that,  meeting  after  a  long  inter- 
mission of  parliaments,  and  after  a  long  series  of  cruelties 
and  illegal  imposts,  they  seemed  inclined  to  examine  griev- 
ances before  they  would  vote  supplies.  For  this  insolence, 
they  were  dissolved  almost  as  soon  as  they  met. 

Defeat,  universal  agitation,  financial  embarrassments,  dis- 
organization in  every  part  of  the  government,  compelled 
Charles  again  to  convene  the  houses  before  the  close  of  the 
same  year.  Their  meeting  was  one  of  the  great  eras  in  the 
history  of  the  civilized  world.  Whatever  of  political  free- 
dom exists  either  in  Europe  or  in  America,  has  sprung, 
directly  or  indirectly,  from  those  institutions  which  they 
secured  and  reformed.  "\Ye  never  turn  to  the  annals  of 
those  times,  without  feeling  increased  admiration  of  the 
patriotism,  the  energy,  the  decision,  the  consummate  wis- 
dom, which  marked  the  measures  of  that  great  parliament, 
from  the  day  on  which  it  met,  to  the  commencement  of  civil 
hostilities. 

The  impeachment  of  Strafford  was  the  first,  and  perhaps 
the  greatest  blow.  The  whole  conduct  of  that  celebrated 
man  proved  that  he  had  formed  a  deliberate  scheme  to  sub- 
vert the  fundamental  laws  of  England.  Those  parts  of  his 
correspondence  which  have  been  brought  to  light  since  his 
death,  place  the  matter  beyond  a  doubt.  One  of  his  admi- 
rers has,  indeed,  offered  to  show,  "  that  the  passages  which 
Mr.  Hallam  has  invidiously  extracted  from  the  correspond- 
ence between  Laud  and  Strafford,  as  proving  their  design  to 
introduce  a  thorough  tyranny,  refer  not  to  any  such  design, 
but  to  a  thorough  reform  in  the  affairs  of  state,  and  the  tho- 
rough maintenance  of  just  authority  V  We  will  recommend 
two  or  three  of  these  passages  to  the  especial  notice  of  our 
readers. 

All  who  know  any  thing  of  those  times  know  that  the 
conduct  of  Hampden  in  the  affair  of  the  ship-money  met 
with  the  warm  approbation  of  every  respectable  royalist  in 
England.  It  drew  forth  the  ardent  eulogies  of  the  cham- 
pions of  the  prerogative,  and  even  of  the  crown  lawyers 
themselves.  Clarendon  allows  his  demeanour  through  the 
whole  proceeding  to  have  been  such,  that  even  those  who 
watched  for  an  occasion  against  the  defender  of  the  people, 
were  compelled  to  acknowledge  themselves  unable  to  find 


208        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

any  fault  in  him.  That  he  was  right  in  the  point  of  law,  is 
now  universally  admitted.  Even  had  it  been  otherwise,  he 
had  a  fair  case.  Five  of  the  judges,  servile  as  our  courts 
then  were,  pronounced  in  his  favour.  The  majority  against 
him  was  the  smallest  possible.  In  no  country  retaining  the 
slightest  vestige  of  constitutional  liberty,  can  a  modest  and 
decent  appeal  to  the  laws  be  treated  as  a  crime.  Straiford, 
however,  recommends  that,  for  taking  the  sense  of  a  legal 
tribunal  on  a  legal  question,  Hampden  should  be  punished, 
and  punished  severely — "  whipt,'^  says  the  insolent  apostate, 
^'  whipt  into  his  senses.  If  the  rod,^'  he  adds,  ^'  be  so  used 
that  it  smarts  not,  I  am  the  more  sorry.^'  This  is  the  main- 
tenance of  just  authority. 

In  civilized  nations,  the  most  arbitrary  governments  have 
generally  suffered  justice  to  have  a  free  course  in  private 
suits.  Strafford  wished  to  make  every  cause  in  every  court 
subject  to  the  royal  prerogative.  He  complained,  that  in 
Ireland  he  was  not  permitted  to  meddle  in  cases  between 
party  and  party.  "  I  know  very  well,"  says  he,  '^  that  the 
'common  lawyers  will  be  passionately  against  it,  who  are 
wont  to  put  such  a  prejudice  upon  all  other  professions,  as 
if  none  were  to  be  trusted,  or  capable  to  administer  justice 
but  themselves;  yet  how  well  this  suits  with  monarchy,  when 
they  monopolize  all  to  be  governed  by  their  year-books,  you 
in  England  have  a  costly  example."  We  are  really  curious 
to  know  by  what  arguments  it  is  to  be  proved,  that  the 
power  of  interfering  in  the  lawsuits  of  individuals  is  part 
of  the  just  authority  of  the  executive  government. 

It  is  not  strange  that  a  man  so  careless  of  the  common 
civil  rights,  which  even  despots  have  generally  respected, 
should  treat  with  scorn  the  limitations  which  the  constitu- 
tion imposes  on  the  royal  prerogative.  We  might  quote 
pages ;  but  we  will  content  ourselves  with  a  single  speci- 
men :  "  The  debts  of  the  Crown  being  taken  off,  i/ou  may 
govern  as  you  jilease;  and  most  resolute  I  am  that  may 
be  done  without  borrowing  any  help  forth  of  the  king's 
lodgings." 

Such  was  the  theory  of  that  thorough  reform  in  the  state 
which  Strafford  meditated.  His  whole  practice,  from  the 
day  on  which  he  sold  himself  to  the  court,  was  in  strict 
conformity  to  his  theory.     For  his  accomplices,  various  ex- 


hallam's  constitutioi^al  history.  209 

cuses  may  be  urged :  ignorance,  imbecility,  religious  bigotry. 
But  "NVeutworth  had  no  such  plea.  His  intellect  was  capa- 
cious. His  early  preposessions  were  on  the  side  of  popular 
rights.  He  knew  the  whole  beauty  and  value  of  the  system 
which  he  attempted  to  deface.  He  was  the  first  of  the 
Eats  ;  the  first  of  those  statesmen  whose  patriotism  has  been 
only  the  coquetry  of  political  prostitution ;  whose  profligacy 
has  taught  governments  to  adopt  the  old  maxim  of  the 
slave-market,  that  it  is  cheaper  to  buy  than  to  breed,  to  im- 
port defenders  from  an  opposition,  than  to  rear  them  in  a 
ministry.  He  was  the  first  Englishman  to  whom  a  peer- 
age was  not  an  addition  of  honour,  but  a  sacrament  of  infamy 
— a  baptism  into  the  communion  of  corruption.  As  he 
was  the  earliest  of  the  hateful  list,  so  was  he  also  by  far 
the  greatest — eloquent,  sagacious,  adventurous,  intrepid, 
ready  of  invention,  immutable  of  purpose,  in  every  talent 
which  exalts  or  destroys  nations,  pre-eminent,  the  lost  Arch- 
angel, the  Satan  of  the  apostasy.  The  title  for  which,  at 
the  time  of  his  desertion,  he  exchanged  a  name  honourably 
distinguished  in  the  cause  of  the  people,  reminds  us  of  the 
appellation  which,  from  the  moment  of  the  first  treason, 
fixed  itself  on  the  fallen  Son  of  the  Morning — 

"So  call  him  now. — His  former  name 
Is  heard  no  more  in  heaven." 

The  defection  of  Strafi"ord  from  the  popular  party  contri- 
buted mainly  to  draw  on  him  the  hatred  of  his  contempo- 
raries. It  has  since  made  him  an  object  of  peculiar  interest 
to  those  whose  lives  have  been  spent,  like  his,  in  proving 
that  there  is  no  malice  like  the  malice  of  a  renegade.  No- 
thing can  be  more  natural  or  becoming,  than  that  one  turn- 
coat should  eulogize  another. 

Many  enemies  of  public  liberty  have  been  distinguished 
by  their  private  virtues.  But  Strafford  was  the  same 
throughout.  As  was  the  statesman,  such  was  the  kinsman, 
and  such  the  lover.  His  conduct  towards  Lord  Mountmorris 
is  recorded  by  Clarendon.  For  a  word  which  can  scarcely 
be  called  rash,  which  could  not  have  been  made  the  subject 
of  an  ordinary  civil  action,  he  dragged  a  man  of  high  rank, 
married  to  a  relative  of  that  saint  about  whom  he  whim- 
pered to  the  Peers,  before  a  tribunal  of  his  slaves.  Sentence 

18* 


210         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

of  death  was  passed.  Every  thing  but  death  was  inflicted. 
Yet  the  treatment  which  Lord  Ely  experienced  was  still 
more  disgusting.  That  nobleman  was  thrown  into  prison, 
in  order  to  compel  him  to  settle  his  estate  in  a  manner 
agreeable  to  his  daughter-in-law,  whom,  as  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe,  Straiford  had  debauched.  These  stories 
do  not  rest  on  vague  report.  The  historians  most  partial 
to  the  minister  admit  their  truth,  and  censure  them  in  terms 
which,  though  too  lenient  for  the  occasion,  are  still  se- 
vere. These  facts  are  alone  sufficient  to  justify  the  ap- 
pellation with  which  Pym  branded  him — "the  wicked 
earl.^' 

In  spite  of  all  his  vices,  in  spite  of  all  his  dangerous 
projects,  Strafford  was  certainly  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  the 
law ;  but  of  the  law  in  all  its  rigour ;  of  the  law  according 
to  the  utmost  strictness  of  the  letter  which  killeth.  He 
was  not  to  be  torn  in  pieces  by  a  mob,  or  stabbed  in  the 
back  by  an  assassin.  He  was  not  to  have  punishment 
meted  out  to  him  from  his  own  iniquitous  measure.  But 
if  justice,  in  the  whole  range  of  its  wide  armory,  contained 
one  weapon  which  could  pierce  him,  that  weapon  his  pur- 
suers were  bound,  before  Grod  and  man,  to  employ. 

"If  he  may 
Find  mere}'  in  the  law,  'tis  his:  if  none, 
Let  him  not  seek  't  of  us." 

Such  was  the  language  which  the  Parliament  might  justly 
use. 

Did  then  the  articles  against  Strafford  strictly  amount  to 
high  treason  ?  Many  people,  who  know  neither  what  the 
articles  were  nor  what  high  treason  is,  will  answer  in  the 
negative,  simply  because  the  accused  person,  speaking  for 
his  life,  took  that  ground  of  defence.  The  Journals  of  the 
Lords  show  that  the  judges  were  consulted.  They  an- 
swered with  one  accord,  that  the  articles  on  which  the  earl 
was  convicted  amounted  to  high  treason.  This  judicial 
opinion,  even  if  we  suppose  it  to  have  been  erroneous,  goes 
far  to  justify  the  Parliament.  The  judgment  pronounced 
in  the  Exchequer  Chamber,  has  always  been  urged  by  the 
apologists  of  Charles  in  defence  of  his  conduct  respecting 
ehip-money.     Yet  on  that  occasion  there  was  but  a  bare 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  211 

majority  in  favour  of  the  party  at  whose  pleasure  all  the 
magistrates  composing  the  tribunal  were  removable.  The 
decision  in  the  case  of  Strafford  was  unanimous ;  as  far  as 
we  can  judge,  it  was  unbiased;  and  though  there  may  be 
room  for  hesitation,  we  think,  on  the  whole,  that  it  was 
reasonable.  "It  may  be  remarked/^  says  Mr.  Hallam, 
"  that  the  fifteenth  article  of  the  impeachment,  charging 
Strafford  with  raising  money  by  his  own  authority,  and 
quartering  troops  on  the  people  of  Ireland,  in  order  to  com- 
pel their  obedience  to  his  unlawful  requisitions,  upon  which, 
and  upon  one  other  article,  not  upon  the  whole  matter,  the 
Peers  voted  him  guilty,  does,  at  least,  approach  very 
nearly,  if  we  may  not  say  more,  to  a  subjitantive  treason 
within  the  statute  of  Edward  III.,  as  a  levying  of  war 
against  the  king."  This  most  sound  and  just  exposition 
has  provoked  a  very  ridiculous  reply.  "  It  should  seem  to 
be  an  Irish  construction  this,'^  says  an  assailant  of  Mr. 
Hallam,  "  which  makes  the  raising  money  for  the  king's 
service,  with  his  knowledge,  and  by  his  approbation,  to 
come  under  the  head  of  levying  war  on  the  king,  and  there- 
fore to  be  high  treason.''  Now,  people  who  undertake  to 
write  on  points  of  constitutional  law  should  know,  what 
every  attorney's  clerk  and  every  forward  school-boy  on  an 
upper  form  knows,  that,  by  a  fundamental  maxim  of  our 
polity,  the  king  can  do  no  wrong;  that  every  court  is 
bound  to  suppose  his  conduct  and  his  sentiments  to  be,  on 
every  occasion,  such  as  they  ought  to  be ;  and  that  no  evi- 
dence can  be  received  for  the  purpose  of  setting  aside  this 
loyal  and  salutary  presumption.  The  Lords,  therefore,  were 
bound  to  take  it  for  granted,  that  the  king  considered  arms 
which  were  unlawfully  directed  against  his  people,  as  directed 
against  his  own  throne. 

The  remarks  of  Mr.  Hallam  on  the  bill  of  attainder, 
though,  as  usual,  weighty  and  acute,  do  not  perfectly  satisfy 
us.  He  defends  the  principle,  but  objects  to  the  severity 
of  the  punishment.  That,  on  great  emergencies,  the  state 
may  justifiably  pass  a  retrospective  act  against  an  offender, 
we  have  no  doubt  whatever.  We  are  acquainted  with  only 
one  argument  on  the  other  side,  which  has  in  it  enough  of 
reason  to  bear  an  answer.  "Warning,  it  is  said,  is  the  end 
of  punishment.     But  a  punishment  inflicted,  not  by  a  gene- 


212  MACAULAY's    miscellaneous  WRITINao. 

ral  rule,  but  by  an  arbitrary  discretion,  cannot  serve  the 
purpose  of  a  warning ;  it  is  therefore  useless ;  and  useless 
pain  ought  not  to  be  inflicted.  This  sophism  has  found  its 
way  into  several  books  on  penal  legislation.  It  admits, 
however,  of  a  very  simple  refutation.  In  the  first  place, 
punishments  ex  post  facto  are  not  altogether  useless,  even 
as  warnings.  They  are  warnings  to  a  particular  class, 
which  stands  in  great  need  of  warnings — to  favourites  and 
ministers.  They  remind  persons  of  this  description,  that 
there  may  be  a  day  of  reckoning  for  those  who  ruin  and 
enslave  their  country  in  all  the  forms  of  law.  But  this  is 
not  all.  Warning  is,  in  ordinary  cases,  the  principal  end  of 
/)unishment ;  but  it  is  not  the  only  end.  To  remove  the 
offender,  to  preserve  society  from  those  dangers  which  are 
to  be  apprehended  from  his  incorrigible  depravity,  is  often 
one  of  the  ends.  In  the  case  of  such  a  knave  as  Wild,  or 
such  a  ruffian  as  Thurtell,  it  is  a  very  important  end.  In 
the  case  of  a  powerful  and  wicked  statesman,  it  is  infinitely 
more  important;  so  important,  as  alone  to  justify  the 
utmost  severity,  even  though  it  were  certain  that  his  fate 
would  not  deter  others  from  imitating  his  example.  At 
present,  indeed,  we  should  think  it  extremely  pernicious  to 
take  such  a  course,  even  with  a  worse  minister  than  Straf- 
ford, if  a  worse  could  exist ;  for,  at  present.  Parliament 
has  only  to  withhold  its  support  from  a  cabinet  to  pro- 
duce an  immediate  change  of  hands.  The  case  was 
widely  different  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the  First.  That 
prince  had  governed  for  seven  years  without  any  Par- 
liament; and  even  when  Parliament  was  sitting,  had 
supported  Buckingham  against  its  most  violent  remon- 
strances. 

Mr.  Hallam  is  of  opinion  that  a  bill  of  pains  and  penal- 
ties ought  to  have  been  passed  against  Strafford ;  but  he 
draws  a  distinction  less  just,  we  think,  than  his  distinctions 
usually  are.  His  opinion,  so  far  as  we  can  collect  it,  is  this; 
that  there  are  almost  insurmountable  objections  to  retro- 
spective laws  for  capital  punishment;  but  that  where  the 
punishment  stops  short  of  death,  the  objections  are  com- 
paratively trifling.  Now  the  practice  of  taking  the  severity 
of  the  penalty  into  consideration,  when  the  question  is  about 
the  mode  of  procedure  and  the  rules  of  evidence,  is  no 


HALLAM^S   CONSTITUTIONAL   HISTORY.  213 

doubt  sufficiently  common.  We  often  see  a  man  convicted 
of  a  simple  larceny,  on  evidence  on  which  he  would  not  be 
convicted  of  a  burglary.  It  sometimes  happens  that  a  jury, 
when  there  is  strong  suspicion,  but  Qot  absolute  demonstra- 
tion, that  an  act,  unquestionably  amounting  to  murder,  was 
committed  by  the  prisoner  before  them,  will  find  him  guilty 
of  manslaughter ;  but  this  is  surely  very  irrational.  The 
rules  of  evidence  no  more  depend  on  the  magnitude  of  the 
interests  at  stake,  than  the  rules  of  arithmetic.  We  might 
as  well  say,  that  we  have  a  greater  chance  of  throwing  a 
size  when  we  are  playing  for  a  penny  than  when  we  are 
playing  for  a  thousand  pounds,  as  that  a  form  of  trial  which 
is  sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  justice,  in  a  matter  affi^cting 
liberty  and  property,  is  insufficient  in  a  matter  affecting  life. 
Nay,  if  a  mode  of  proceeding  be  too  lax  for  capital  cases, 
it  is,  a  fortiori,  too  lax  for  all  others  ]  for,  in  capital  cases, 
the  principles  of  human  nature  will  always  afford  considera- 
ble security.  No  judge  is  so  cruel  as  he  who  indemnifies 
himself  for  scrupulosity  in  cases  of  blood,  by  license  in 
affairs  of  smaller  importance.  The  difference  in  tale  on  the 
one  side  far  more  than  makes  up  for  the  difference  in  weight 
on  the  other. 

If  there  be  any  universal  objection  to  retrospective  punish- 
ment, there  is  no  more  to  be  said.  But  such  is  not  the  opi- 
nion of  Mr.  Hallam.  He  approves  of  the  mode  of  proceed- 
ing. He  thinks  that  a  punishment  not  previously  affixed 
by  law  to  the  offences  of  Strafford,  should  have  been  inflicted; 
that  he  should  have  been  degraded  from  his  rank,  and  con- 
demned to  perpetual  banishment,  by  act  of  Parliament ;  but 
he  sees  strong  objections  to  the  taking  away  of  his  life. 
Our  difficulty  would  have  been  at  the  first  step,  and  there 
only.  Indeed,  we  can  scarcely  conceive  that  any  case, 
which  does  not  call  for  capital  punishment,  can  call  for  re- 
trospective punishment.  We  can  scarcely  conceive  a  man 
so  wicked  and  so  dangerous,  that  the  whole  course  of  law 
must  be  disturbed  in  order  to  reach  him,  yet  not  so  wicked 
as  to  deserve  the  severest  sentence,  nor  so  dangerous  as  tc 
require  the  last  and  surest  custody — that  of  the  grave. 
If  we  had  thought  that  Strafford  might  be  safely  suffered  to 
live  in  France,  we  should  have  thought  it  better  that  he 
should  continue  to  live  in  England,  than  that  he  should  be 


214         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

exiled  by  a  special  act.  As  to  degradation,  it  was  not  the 
carl,  but  the  general  and  the  statesman,  whom  the  people 
had  to  fear.  Essex  said,  on  that  occasion,  with  more  truth 
than  eloquence,  ^'Stone-dead  hath  no  fellow.'^  And  often 
during  the  civil  wars  the  Parliament  had  reason  to  rejoice 
that  an  irreversible  law  and  an  impassable  barrier  protected 
them  from  the  valour  and  capacity  of  Strafford. 

It  is  remarkable  that  neither  Hyde  nor  Falkland  voted 
against  the  bill  of  attainder.  There  is,  indeed,  reason  to 
believe  that  Falkland  spoke  in  favour  of  it.  In  one  respect, 
as  Mr.  Hallam  has  observed,  the  proceeding  was  honourably 
distinguished  from  others  of  the  same  kind.  An  act  was 
passed  to  relieve  the  children  of  Strafford  from  the  forfeiture 
and  corruption  of  blood,  which  were  the  legal  consequences 
of  the  sentence.  The  crown  had  never  shown  equal  gene- 
rosity in  a  case  of  treason.  The  liberal  conduct  of  the 
Commons  has  been  fully  and  most  appropriately  repaid. 
The  house  of  Wentworth  has  since  been  as  much  distin- 
guished by  public  spirit  as  by  power  and  splendour ;  and 
may  at  the  present  time  boast  of  members,  with  whom  Say 
and  Hampden  would  have  been  proud  to  act. 

It  is  somewhat  curious  that  the  admirers  of  Strafford  should 
also  be,  without  a  single  exception,  the  admirers  of  Charles; 
for  whatever  we  may  think  of  the  conduct  of  the  Parliament 
towards  the  unhappy  favourite,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  treatment  which  he  received  from  his  master  was  disgrace- 
ful. Faithless  alike  to  his  people  and  his  tools,  the  King 
did  not  scruple  to  play  the  part  of  the  cowardly  approver, 
who  hangs  his  accomplice.  It  is  good  that  there  should  be 
such  men  as  Charles  in  every  league  of  villany.  It  is  for 
such  men  that  the  offers  of  pardon  and  reward,  which  appear 
after  a  murder,  are  intended.  "They  are  indemnified,  remu- 
nerated, and  despised.  The  very  magistrate  who  avails 
himself  of  their  assistance,  looks  on  them  as  wretches  more 
degraded  than  the  criminal  whom  they  betray.  Was  Straf- 
ford innocent  ?  was  he  a  meritorious  servant  of  the  Crown  ? 
If  so,  what  shall  we  think  jf  the  prince,  who,  having  so- 
lemnly promised  him  that  not  a  hair  of  his  head  should  be 
hurt,  and  possessing  an  unquestioned  constitutional  right  to 
save  him,  gave  him  up  to  the  vengeance  of  his  enemies  ? 
There  were  some  points  which  we  know  that  Charles  would 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  215 

not  concede,  and  for  which  he  was  willing  to  risk  the  chances 
of  civil  war.  Ought  not  a  king,  who  will  make  a  stand  for 
any  thing,  to  make  a  stand  for  the  innocent  blood  ?  Was 
Strafford  guilty  ?  Even  on  this  supposition,  it  is  difficult  not 
to  feel  disdain  for  the  partner  of  his  guilt — the  tempter 
turned  punisher.  If,  indeed,  from  that  time  forth,  the  con- 
duct of  Charles  had  been  blameless,  it  might  have  been  said 
that  his  eyes  were  at  last  opened  to  the  errors  of  his  former 
conduct,  and  that,  in  sacrificing  to  the  wishes  of  his  Parlia- 
ment a  minister  whose  crime  had  been  a  devotion  too  zeal- 
ous to  the  interests  of  his  prerogative,  he  gave  a  painful  and 
deeply  humiliating  proof  of  the  sincerity  of  his  repentance. 
"We  may  describe  his  behaviour  on  this  occasion  in  terms  re- 
sembling those  which  Hume  has  employed,  when  speaking 
of  the  conduct  of  Churchill  at  the  Revolution.  It  required 
ever  after  the  most  rigid  justice  and  sincerity  in  his  dealings 
with  his  people  to  vindicate  it.  His  subsequent  dealings  with 
his  people,  however,  clearly  showed,  that  it  was  not  from  any 
respect  for  the  constitution,  or  from  any  sense  of  the  deep 
criminality  of  the  plans  in  which  Strafford  and  himself  had 
been  engaged,  that  he  gave  up  his  minister  to  the  axe.  It 
became  evident  that  he  had  abandoned  a  servant  who,  deeply 
guilty  as  to  all  others,  was  guiltless  to  him  alone,  solely  in 
order  to  gain  time  for  maturing  other  schemes  of  tyranny, 
and  purchasing  the  aid  of  other  AVentworths.  He  who 
would  not  avail  himself  of  the  power  which  the  laws  gave 
him  to  save  a  friend,  to  whom  his  honour  was  pledged,  soon 
showed  that  he  did  not  scruple  to  break  every  law  and  forfeit 
every  pledge,  in  orden  to  work  the  ruin  of  his  opponents. 

^'Put  not  your  trust  in  princes !"  was  the  expression  of  the 
fallen  minister,  when  he  heard  that  Charles  had  consented 
to  his  death.  The  whole  history  of  the  times  is  a  sermon 
on  that  bitter  text.  The  defence  of  the  Long  Parliament  is 
comprised  in  the  dying  words  of  its  victim. 

The  early  measures  of  that  Parliament,  Mr.  Hallam  in 
general  approves.  But  he  considers  the  proceedings  which 
took  place  after  the  recess  in  the  summer  of  1641,  as  mis- 
chievous and  violent.  He  thinks  that,  from  that  time,  the 
demands  of  the  Houses  were  not  warranted  by  any  immi- 
nent danger  to  the  constitution,  and  that  in  the  war  which 
ensued  they  were  clearly  the  aggressors.     As  this  is  one  of 


216         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

the  most  interesting  questions  in  our  history,  we  will  ven 
ture  to  state,  at  some  length,  the  reasons  which  have  led  us 
to  form  an  opinion  on  it  contrary  to  that  of  a  writer  whose 
judgment  we  so  highly  respect. 

We  will  premise,  that  we  think  worse  of  King  Charles  the 
First  than  even  Mr.  Hallam  appears  to  do.  The  fixed  hatred 
of  liberty,  which  was  the  principle  of  all  his  public  conduct; 
the  unscrupulousness  with  which  he  adopted  any  means 
which  might  enable  him  to  attain  his  ends;  the  readiness 
with  which  he  gave  promises;  the  impudence  with  which 
he  broke  them;  the  cruel  indifference  with  which  he  threw 
away  his  useless  or  damaged  tools,  rendered  him,  at  least 
till  his  character  was  fully  exposed  and  his  power  shaken  to 
its  foundations,  a  more  dangerous  enemy  to  the  constitution, 
than  a  man  of  far  greater  talents  and  resolutions  might  have 
been.  Such  princes  may  still  be  seen — the  scandals  of  the 
southern  thrones  of  Europe;  princes  false  alike  to  the  ac- 
complices who  have  served  them,  and  to  the  opponents  who 
have  spared  them ;  princes  who,  in  the  hour  of  danger,  con- 
cede every  thing,  swear  every  thing,  hold  out  their  cheeks  to 
every  smiter,  give  up  to  punishment  every  minister  of  their 
tyranny,  and  await  with  meek  and  smiling  implacability 
the  blessed  day  of  perjury  and  proscription. 

We  will  pass  by  the  instances  of  oppression  and  false- 
hood which  disgraced  the  early  years  of  the  reign  of  Charles. 
We  will  leave  out  of  the  question  the  whole  history  of  his 
third  Parliament,  the  price  which  he  exacted  for  assenting 
to  the  Petition  of  Right,  the  perfidy  with  which  he  violated 
his  engagements,  the  death  of  Eliot — the  barbarous  punish- 
ments inflicted  by  the  Star  Chamber,  the  ship-money,  and 
all  the  measures,  now  universally  condemned,  which  dis- 
graced his  administration  from  1630  to  1640.  We  will  admit, 
that  it  might  be  the  duty  of  the  Parliament,  after  punishing 
the  most  guilty  of  his  creatures,  after  abolishing  the  inqui- 
sitorial tribunals,  which  had  been  the  instruments  of  his 
tyranny,  after  reversing  the  unjust  sentences  of  his  victims,  to 
pause  in  its  course.  The  concessions  which  had  been  made 
were  great,  the  evils  of  civil  war  obvious,  the  advantages  even 
of  victory  doubtful.  The  former  errors  of  the  king  might  be 
imputed  to  youth,  to  the  pressure  of  circumstances,  to  the 
influence  of  evil  counsel,  to  the  undefined  state  of  the  law. 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  217 

We  firmly  believe,  that  if,  even  at  this  eleventh  hour,  Charles 
had  acted  fairly  towards  his  people,  if  he  had  even  acted 
fairly  towards  his  own  partisans,  the  House  of  Commons 
would  have  given  him  a  fair  chance  of  retrieving  the  public 
confidence.  Such  was  the  opinion  of  Clarendon.  He  dis- 
tinctly states,  that  the  fury  of  opposition  had  abated;  that  a 
reaction  had  begun  to  take  place;  that  the  majority  of  those 
who  had  taken  part  against  the  king  were  desirous  of  an 
honourable  and  complete  reconciliation ;  and  that  the  more 
violent,  or,  as  it  soon  appeared,  the  more  judicious  members 
of  the  party,  were  fast  declining  in  credit.  The  rerjonstrance 
had  been  carried  with  great  difficulty.  The  uncompromising 
antagonists  of  the  court,  such  as  Cromwell,  had  begun  to  talk 
of  selling  their  estates  and  leaving  England.  The  event  soon 
showed,  that  they  were  the  only  men  who  really  understood 
how  much  inhumanity  and  fraud  lay  hid  under  the  constitu- 
tional language  and  gracious  demeanour  of  the  king. 

The  attempt  to  seize  the  five  members  was  undoubtedly 
the  real  cause  of  the  war.  From  that  moment,  the  loyal 
confidence  with  which  most  of  the  popular  party  were 
beginning  to  regard  the  king,  was  turned  into  hatred  and 
incurable  suspicion.  From  that  moment,  the  Parliament 
was  compelled  to  surround  itself  with  defensive  arms;  from 
that  moment  the  city  assumed  the  appearance  of  a  garrison ; 
from  that  moment  it  was  that,  in  the  phrase  of  Clarendon, 
the  carriage  of  Hampden  became  fiercer,  that  he  drew  the 
sword  and  threw  away  the  scabbard.  For,  from  that  mo- 
ment, it  must  have  been  evident  to  every  impartial  observer, 
that  in  the  midst  of  professions,  oaths,  and  smiles,  the 
tyrant  was  constantly  looking  forward  to  an  absolute  sway, 
and  to  bloody  revenge. 

The  advocates  of  Charles  have  very  dexterously  contrived 
to  conceal  from  their  readers  the  real  nature  of  this  transac- 
tion. By  making  concessions  apparently  candid  and  ample, 
they  elude  the  great  accusation.  They  allow  that  the  mea- 
sure was  weak,  and  even  frantic,  an  absurd  caprice  of  Lord 
Digby,  absurdly  adopted  by  the  king.  And  thus  they  save 
their  client  from  the  full  penalty  of  his  transgression,  by 
entering  a  plea  of  guilty  to  the  minor  offence.  To  us  his  con- 
duct appears  at  this  day,  as  at  the  time  it  appeared  to  the 
Parliament  and  the  city.      We  think  it  by  no  means  so 

Vol.  I.— 19 


218  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WEITINGS 

foolish  as  it  pleases  his  friends  to  represent  it,  and  far  more 
wicked. 

In  the  first  place,  the  transaction  was  illegal  from  begin- 
ning to  end.  The  impeachment  was  illegal.  The  process 
was  illegal.  The  service  was  illegal.  If  Charles  wished  to 
prosecute  the  five  members  for  treason,  a  bill  against  them 
should  have  been  sent  to  a  grand  jury.  That  a  commoner 
sannot  be  tried  for  high  treason  by  the  Lords  at  the  suit  of 
the  crown,  is  part  of  the  very  alphabet  of  our  law.  That 
no  man  can  be  arrested  by  a  message  or  a  verbal  summons 
of  the  king,  with  or  without  a  warrant  from  a  responsible 
magistrate,  is  equally  clear.  This  was  an  established  maxim 
of  our  jurisprudence  in  the  time  of  Edward  the  Fourth. 
"A  subject,"  said  Chief  Justice  Markham  to  that  prince, 
"may  arrest  for  treason:  the  king  cannot;  for  if  the  arrest 
be  illegal,  the  party  has  no  remedy  against  the  king." 

The  time  at  which  Charles  took  this  step  also  deserves 
consideration.  We  have  already  said,  that  the  ardour  which 
the  Parliament  had  displayed  at  the  time  of  its  first  meet- 
ing had  considerably  abated;  that  the  leading  opponents 
of  the  court  were  desponding,  and  that  their  followers  were 
in  general  inclined  to  milder  and  more  temperate  measures 
than  those  which  had  hitherto  been  pursued.  In  every 
country,  and  in  none  more  than  in  England,  there  is  a  dis- 
position to  take  the  part  of  those  who  are  unmercifully  run 
down,  and  who  seem  destitute  of  all  means  of  defence. 
Every  man  who  has  observed  the  ebb  and  flow  of  public 
feeling  in  oup  own  time,  will  easily  recall  examples  to  illus- 
trate this  remark.  An  English  statesman  ought  to  pay 
assiduous  worship  to  Nemesis,  to  be  most  apprehensive  of 
ruin  when  he  is  at  the  height  of  power  and  popularity,  and 
to  dread  his  enemy  most,  when  most  completely  prostrated. 
The  fate  of  the  Coalition  Ministry,  in  1784,  is  perhaps  the 
strongest  instance  in  our  history  of  the  operation  of  this 
principle.  A  few  weeks  turned  the  ablest  and  most  extended 
ministry  that  ever  existed,  into  a  feeble  opposition,  and  raised 
a  king  who  was  talking  of  retiring  to  Hanover,  to  a  height 
of  power  which  none  of  his  predecessors  had  enjoyed  since 
the  Revolution.  A  crisis  of  this  description  was  evidently 
approaching  in  1642.  At  such  a  crisis,  a  prince  of  a  really 
honest  and  generous  nature,  who  had  erred,  who  had  seen 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  219 

his  error,  who  had  regretted  the  lost  aiFeetions  of  his  people, 
who  rejoiced  in  the  dawning  hope  of  regaining  them,  Avould 
be  peculiarly  careful  to  take  no  step  which  could  give  occa- 
sion of  offence,  even  to  the  unreasonable.  On  the  other 
hand,  a  tyrant,  whose  whole  life  was  a  lie,  who  hated  the 
constitution  the  more  because  he  had  been  compelled  to 
feign  respect  for  it,  to  whom  his  honour  and  the  love  of  his 
people  were  as  nothing,  would  select  such  a  crisis  for  some 
appalling  violation  of  law,  for  some  stroke  which  might 
remove  the  chiefs  of  an  opposition,  and  intimidate  the  herd. 
This  Charles  attempted.  He  missed  his  blow :  but  so  nar- 
rowly, that  it  would  have  been  mere  madness  in  those  at 
whom  it  was  aimed,  to  trust  him  again. 

It  deserves  to  be  remarked,  that  the  king  had,  a  short 
time  before,  promised  the  most  respectable  royalists  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  Falkland,  Colepepper,  and  Hyde,  that 
he  would  take  no  measure  in  which  that  House  was  con- 
cerned, without  consulting  them.  On  this  occasion  he  did 
not  consult  them.  His  conduct  astonished  them  more  than 
any  other  members  of  the  assembly.  Clarendon  says  that 
they  were  deeply  hurt  by  this  want  of  confidence,  and  the 
more  hurt,  because,  if  they  had  been  consulted,  they  would 
have  done  their  utmost  to  dissuade  Charles  from  so  im- 
proper a  proceeding.  Did  it  never  occur  to  Clarendon,  will 
it  not  at  least  occur  to  men  less  partial,  that  there  was  good 
reason  for  this?  AVhen  the  danger  to  the  throne  seemed 
imminent,  the  king  was  ready  to  put  himself  for  a  time  into 
the  hands  of  those  who,  though  they  had  disapproved  of 
his  past  conduct,  thought  that  the  remedies  had  now  become 
worse  than  the  distempers.  But  we  believe,  that  in  heart 
he  regarded  both  the  parties  in  the  Parliament  with  feelings 
of  aversion,  which  differed  only  in  the  degree  of  their  in- 
tensity; and  that  the  lawful  warning  which  he  proposed  to 
give  by  immolating  the  principal  supporters  of  the  remon- 
strance, was  partly  intended  for  the  instruction  of  those  who 
had  concurred  in  censuring  the  ship-money,  and  in  abolish- 
ing the  Star  Chamber. 

The  Commons  informed  the  king  that  their  members 
should  be  forthcoming  to  answer  any  charge  legally  brought 
against  them.  The  Lords  refused  to  assume  the  uncon 
Btitutional  offices  with  which  he  attempted  to  invest  them 


220        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

And  what  then  was  his  conduct?  He  went,  attended  by 
hundreds  of  armed  men,  to  seize  the  objects  of  his  hatred  in 
the  House  itself!  The  party  opposed  to  him  more  than 
insinuated  that  his  purpose  was  of  the  most  atrocious  kind. 
We  will  not  condemn  him  merely  on  their  suspicions;  we 
will  not  hold  him  answerable  for  the  sanguinary  expressions 
of  the  loose  brawlers  who  composed  his  train.  We  will 
judge  of  his  conduct  by  itself  alone.  And  we  say,  without 
hesitation,  that  it  is  impossible  to  acquit  him  of  having 
meditated  violence,  and  violence  which  might  probably  end 
in  blood.  He  knew  that  the  legality  of  his  proceedings  was 
denied;  he  must  have  known  that  some  of  the  accused 
members  were  not  men  likely  to  submit  peaceably  to  an 
illegal  arrest.  There  was  every  reason  to  expect  that  he 
would  find  them  in  their  places,  that  they  would  refuse  to 
obey  his  summons,  and  that  the  House  would  support  them 
in  their  refusal.  What  course  would  then  have  been  left  to 
him  ?  Unless  we  suppose  that  he  went  on  this  expedition 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  making  himself  ridiculous,  we  must 
believe  that  he  would  have  had  recourse  to  force.  There 
would  have  been  a  scuffle;  and  it  might  not,  under  such 
circumstances,  have  been  in  his  power,  even  if  it  were  in  his 
inclination,  to  prevent  a  scuffle  from  ending  in  a  massacre. 
Fortunately  for  his  fame,  unfortunately  perhaps  for  what  he 
prized  far  more,  the  interests  of  his  hatred  and  his  ambition, 
the  afi'air  ended  differently.  The  birds,  as  he  said,  were 
flown,  and  his  plan  was  disconcerted.  Posterity  is  not 
extreme  to  mark  abortive  crimes.  And  thus  his  advocates 
have  found  it  easy  to  represent  a  step  which,  but  for  a 
trivial  accident,  might  have  filled  England  with  mourning 
and  dismay,  as  a  mere  error  of  judgment,  wild  and  foolish, 
but  perfectly  innocent.  Such  was  not,  however,  at  the  time, 
the  opinion  of  any  party.  The  most  zealous  royalists  were 
so  much  disgusted  and  ashamed,  that  they  suspended  their 
opposition  to  the  popular  party,  and,  silently  at  least,  con- 
curred in  measures  of  precaution  so  strong  as  almost  to 
amount  to  resistance. 

From  that  day,  whatever  of  confidence  and  loyal  attach- 
ment had  survived  the  misrule  of  seventeen  years  was,  in 
the  great  body  of  the  people,  extinguished,  and  extinguished 
for  ever.     As  soon  as  the  outrage  had  failed,  the  hypocrisy 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  221 

recommenced  Down  to  the  very  eve  of  his  flagitious 
at  empt  Char  es  had  been  talking  of  his  respect  for  the  pri! 
vileges  of  Parhament,  and  the  liberties  of  his  people  He 
began  again  in  the  same  style  on  the  morrow  •  but  it  was 
too  late.  To  trust  him  now  would  have  been,  not  modera- 
tion, but  insanity.  What  common  security  would  suffice 
against  a  prince  who  was  evidently  watching  his  season 
with  that  cold  and  patient  hatred  which,  in  th^  lonir  run 
tires  out  every  other  passion  ?  ' 

It  is  certainly  from  no  admiration  of  Charles,  that  Mr 
Hallam  disapproves  of  the  conduct  of  the  House  in  resort^ 
ing  to  arms.  But  he  thinks  that  any  attempt  on  the  part 
of  that  prmce  to  establish  a  despotism  would  have  been  as 
strongly  opposed  by  his  adherents  as  by  his  enemies  :  that 
the  constitution  might  be  considered  as  out  of  dancrer  •  or 
at  least,  that  it  had  more  to  apprehend  from  war  than  from 
the  king.  On  this  subject  Mr.  Hallam  dilates  at  len-th 
and  with  conspicuous  ability.  We  will  offer  a  few  ?on' 
siderations,  which  lead  us  to  incline  to  a  different  opinion. 

Ihe  constitution  of  England  was  only  one  of  a  lar^^e 
family  In  all  the  monarchies  of  western  Europe,  during 
the  middle  ages,  there  existed  restraints   on  the  royal  au^ 

T  !l^'^-r  'i'''^''*^^  ^''''^^  ^^^  representative  assemblies 
in  the  fifteenth  century,  the  government  of  Castile  seems 
to  have  been  as  free  as  that  of  our  own  country.  That  of 
Arragon  was  beyond  all  question  far  more  so.  In  France 
the  sovereign  was  more  absolute.  Yet,  even  in  France! 
the  fetat€s-general  alone  could  constitutionally  impose  taxes 
and  at  the  very  time  when  the  authority  of  those  assem- 
blies was  beginning  to  languish,  the  Parliament  of  Paris 
received  such  an  accession  of  strength,  as  enabled  it,  in 
some  measure,  to  perform  the  functions  of  a  legislative  as- 
sembly.  Sweden  and  Denmark  had  constitutions  of  a 
similar  description. 

Let  us  overleap  two  or  three  hundred  years,  and  con- 
template Europe  at  the  commencement  of  the  eio-hteenth 
century.  Every  free  constitution,  save  one,  hSd  gone 
down  That  of  England  had  weathered  the  danger -and 
was  riding  in  full  security.  In  Denmark  and  Sweden,  the 
^ings  had  availed  themselves  of  the  disputes  which  rao-ed 
between   the   nobles   and  the  commons,  to  unite  all  the 


222        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

powers  of  government  in  their  own  hands.  In  France,  the 
institution  of  the  states  was  only  maintained  by  lawyers,  as 
a  part  of  the  ancient  theory  of  their  government.  It  slept 
a  deep  sleep — destined  to  be  broken  by  a  tremendous 
waking.  No  person  remembered  the  sittings  of  the  three 
orders,  or  expected  ever  to  see  them  renewed.  Louis  the 
Fourteenth  had  imposed  on  his  Parliament  a  patient  silence 
of  sixty  years.  His  grandson,  after  the  war  of  the  Spanish 
succession,  assimilated  the  constitution  of  Arragon  to  that 
of  Castile,  and  extinguished  the  last  feeble  remains  of  liberty 
in  the  Peninsula.  In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
Parliament  was  infinitely  more  powerful  than  it  had  ever 
been.  Not  only  was  its  legislative  authority  fully  esta- 
blished, but  its  right  to  interfere,  by  advice  almost  equivalent 
to  command,  in  every  department  of  the  executive  govern- 
ment, was  recognized.  The  appointment  of  ministers,  the 
relations  with  foreign  powers,  the  conduct  of  a  war  or  a  ne- 
gotiation, depended  less  on  the  pleasure  of  the  prince  than 
on  that  of  the  two  Houses. 

What,  then,  made  us  to  difi"er  ?  Why  was  it  that,  in  that 
epidemic  malady  of  constitutions,  ours  escaped  the  destroy- 
ing influence  ;  or  rather  that,  at  the  very  crisis  of  the  dis- 
ease, a  favourable  turn  took  place  in  England,  and  in  Eng- 
land alone  ?  It  was  not  surely  without  a  cause  that  so  many 
kindred  systems  of  government,  having  flourished  together 
so  long,  languished  and  expired  at  almost  the  same  time. 

It  is  the  fashion  to  say,  that  the  progress  of  civilization 
is  favourable  to  liberty.  The  maxim,  though  on  the  whole 
true,  must  be  limited  by  many  qualifications  and  exceptions. 
Wherever  a  poor  and  rude  nation,  in  which  the  form  of 
government  is  a  limited  monarchy,  receives  a  great  acces- 
sion of  wealth  and  knowledge,  it  is  in  imminent  danger  of 
falling  under  arbitrary  powe'r. 

In  such  a  state  of  society  as  that  which  existed  all  over 
Europe  during  the  middle  ages,  it  was  not  from  the  king,  but 
from  the  nobles,  that  there  was  danger.  Very  slight  checks 
sufficed  to  keep  the  sovereign  in  order.  His  means  of  cor- 
ruption and  intimidation  were  very  scanty.  He  had  little 
money,  little  patronage,  no  military  establishment.  His 
armies  resembled  juries.  They  were  draughted  out  of  the 
mass  of  the  people ;  they  soon  returned  to  it  again ;  and 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  223 

the  character  which  was  habitual  prevailed  over  that  which 
was  occasional.  A  campaign  of  forty  days  was  too  short, 
the  discipline  of  a  national  militia  too  lax,  to  efface  from 
their  minds  the  feelings  of  civil  life.  As  they  carried  to 
the  camp  the  sentiments  and  interests  of  the  farm  and  the 
shop,  so  they  carried  back  to  the  farm  and  the  shop  the 
military  accomplishments  which  they  had  acquired  in  the 
camp.  At  home,  they  learned  how  to  value  their  rights — 
abroad,  how  to  defend  them. 

Such  a  military  force  as  this  was  a  far  stronger  restraint 
en  the  regal  power,  than  the  legislative  assemblies.  Resist- 
ance to  an  established  government,  in  modern  times  so  diffi- 
cult and  perilous  an  enterprise,  was,  in  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  the  simplest  and  easiest  matter  in  the 
world.  Indeed,  it  was  far  too  simple  and  easy.  An  insur- 
rection was  got  up  then  almost  as  easily  as  a  petition  is  got 
up  now.  In  a  popular  cause,  or  even  in  an  unpopular 
cause  favoured  by  a  few  great  nobles,  an  army  was  raised  in 
a  week.  If  the  king  were  like  our  Edward  tho  Second 
and  Richard  the  Second,  generally  odious,  he  could  not  pro- 
cure a  single  bow  or  halbert.  He  fell  at  once,  and  without 
an  effort.  In  such  times,  a  sovereign  like  Louis  the  Fif- 
teenth, or  the  Emperor  Paul,  would  have  been  pulled  down 
before  his  misgovernment  had  lasted  for  a  month.  "We  find 
that  all  the  fame  and  influence  of  our  Edward  the  Third 
could  not  save  his  Madame  de  Pompadour  from  the  effects 
of  the  public  hatred. 

Hume,  and  many  other  writers,  have  hastily  concluded, 
that  in  the  fifteenth  century  the  English  Parliament  was 
altogether  servile,  because  it  recognised,  without  opposition, 
every  successful  usurper.  That  it  was  not  servile,  its  con- 
duct on  many  occasions  of  inferior  importance  is  sufficient 
to  prove.  But  surely  it  was  not  strange  that  the  majority 
of  the  nobles,  and  of  the  deputies  chosen  by  the  commons, 
should  approve  of  revolutions  which  the  nobles  and  com- 
mons had  effected.  The  Parliament  did  not  blindly  follow 
the  event  of  war ;  but  participated  in  those  changes  of  pub- 
lic sentiment  on  which  the  event  of  war  depended.  The 
legal  check  was  secondary  and  auxiliary  to  that  which  the 
nation  held  in  its  own  hands.  There  have  always  been 
monarchies  in  Asia,  in  which  the  royal  authority  has  beet 


224:        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

tempered  by  fundamental  laws,  though  no  legislative  body 
exists  to  watch  over  them.  The  guaranty  is  the  opinion  of 
a  community,  of  which  every  individual  is  a  soldier.  Thus 
the  king  of  Oaubul,  as  Mr.  Elphinstoue  informs  us,  cannot 
augment  the  land  revenue,  or  interfere  with  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  ordinary  tribunals. 

In  the  European  kingdoms  of  this  description,  there  were 
representative  assemblies.  But  it  was  not  necessary  that 
those  assemblies  should  meet  very  frequently,  that  they 
should  interfere  with  all  the  operations  of  the  executive 
government,  that  they  should  watch  with  jealousy,  and  re- 
sent with  prompt  indignation,  every  violation  of  the  laws 
which  the  sovereign  might  commit.  They  were  so  strong,  that 
they  might  safely  be  careless.  He  was  so  feeble,  that  he 
might  safely  be  sufiFered  to  encroach.  If  he  ventured  too 
far,  chastisement  and  ruin  were  at  hand.  In  fact,  the  people 
suffered  more  from  his  weakness  than  from  his  authority. 
The  tyranny  of  wealthy  and  powerful  subjects  was  the 
characteristic  evil  of  the  times.  The  royal  prerogatives 
were  not  even  sufficient  for  the  defence  of  property  and  the 
maintenance  of  police. 

The  progress  of  civilization  introduced  a  great  change. 
War  became  a  science ;  and,  as  a  necessary  consequence, 
a  separate  trade.  The  great  body  of  the  people  grew  every 
day  more  reluctant  to  undergo  the  inconveniences  of  military 
service,  and  better  able  to  pay  others  for  undergoing  them. 
A  new  class  of  men,  therefore — dependent  on  the  crown 
alone ;  natural  enemies  of  those  popular  rights,  which  are  to 
them  as  the  dew  to  the  fleece  of  Gideon;  slaves  among 
freemen;  freemen  among  slaves — grew  into  importance. 
That  physical  force,  which  in  the  dark  ages  had  belonged 
to  the  nobles  and  the  commons,  and  had,  far  more  than  any 
charter  or  any  assembly,  been  the  safeguard  of  their  privi- 
leges, was  transferred  entire  to  the  king.  Monarchy  gained 
in  two  ways..  The  sovereign  was  strengthened,  the  subjects 
weakened.  The  great  mass  of  the  population,  destitute  of 
all  military  discipline  and  organization,  ceased  to  exercise 
any  influence  by  force  on  political  transactions.  There 
have,  indeed,  during  the  last  hundred  and  fifty  years,  been 
many  popular  insurrections  in  Europe ;  but  all  have  failed. 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  225 

except  those  in  which  the  regular  army  has  been  induced  to 
join  the  disaffected. 

Those  legal  checks^  Tvhich  had  been  inadequate  to  the  pur- 
pose for  which  they  were  designed  while  the  sovereign  re- 
mained dependent  on  his  subjects,  were  now  found  wanting. 
The  dykes,  which  had  been  sufficient  while  the  waters  were 
low,  were  not  high  enough  to  keep  out  the  spring  tide.  The 
deluge  passed  over  them ;  and,  according  to  the  exquisite 
illustration  of  Butler,  the  formal  boundaries  which  had  ex- 
cluded it,  now  held  it  in.  The  old  constitutions  fared  like 
the  old  shields  and  coats  of  mail'.  They  were  the  defences 
of  a  rude  age ;  and  they  did  well  enough  against  the  wea- 
pons of  a  rude  age.  But  new  and  more  formidable  means 
of  destruction  were  invented.  The  ancient  panoply  be- 
came useless ;  and  it  was  thrown  aside  to  rust  in  lumber- 
rooms,  or  exhibited  only  as  part  of  an  idle  pageant. 

Thus  absolute  monarchy  was  established  on  the  Continent. 
England  escaped;  but  she  escaped  very  narrowly.  Hap- 
pily, our  insular  situation,  and  the  pacific  policy  of  James, 
rendered  standing  armies  unnecessary  here,  till  they  had 
been  for  some  time  kept  up  in  the  neighbouring  kingdoms. 
Our  public  men  had  therefore  an  opportunity  of  watching 
the  effects  produced  by  this  momentous  change,  in  forms  of 
government  which  bore  a  close  analogy  to  that  established 
in  England.  Every  where  they  saw  the  power  of  the  mo- 
narch increasing,  the  resistance  of  assemblies,  which  were 
no  longer  supported  by  a  national  force,  gradually  becoming 
more  and  more  feeble,  and  at  length  altogether  ceasing. 
The  friends  and  the  enemies  of  liberty  perceived  with  equal 
clearness  the  causes  of  this  general  decay.  It  is  the  favourite 
theme  of  Strafford.  He  advises  the  king  to  procure  from 
the  judges  a  recognition  of  his  right  to  raise  an  army  at  his 
pleasure.  "  This  piece,  well  fortified,"  says  he,  "  for  ever 
vindicates  the  monarchy  at  home  from  under  the  conditions 
and  restraints  of  subjects."  We  firmly  believe  that  he  was 
in  the  right.  Nay ;  we  believe  that,  even  if  no  deliberate 
scheme  of  arbitrary  government  had  been  formed  by  the 
sovereign  and  his  ministers,  there  was  great  reason  to  ap- 
prehend a  natural  extinction  of  the  constitution.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, Charles  had  played  the  part  of  Gustavus  Adolphus ; 
if  he  had  carried  on  a  popular  war  for  the  defence  of  the 


226 

Protestant  cause  in  Germany ;  if  ho  had  gratified  the  na- 
tional pride  by  a  series  of  victories ;  if  he  had  formed  an 
army  of  forty  or  fifty  thousand  devoted  soldiers,  we  do  not 
see  what  chance  the  nation  would  have  had  of  escaping 
from  despotism.  The  judges  would  have  given  as  strong  a 
decision  in  favour  of  camp-money,  as  they  gave  in  favour  of 
ship-money.  If  they  had  scrupled,  it  would  have  made  little 
difference.  An  individual  who  resisted  would  have  been 
treated  as  Charles  treated  Eliot,  and  as  Strafford  wished  to 
treat  Hampden.  The  Parliament  might  have  been  sum- 
moned once  in  twenty  years,  to  congratulate  a  king  on  his 
accession,  or  to  give  solemnity  to  some  great  measure  of 
state.  Such  hath  been  the  fate  of  legislative  assemblies  as 
powerful,  as  much  respected,  as  high-spirited,  as  the  Eng- 
lish Lords  and  Commons. 

The  two  Houses,  surrounded  by  the  ruins  of  so  many 
free  constitutions,  overthrown  or  sapped  by  the  new  military 
system,  were  required  to  intrust  the  command  of  an  army, 
and  the  conduct  of  the  Irish  war,  to  a  king  who  had  pro- 
posed to  himself  the  destruction  of  liberty  as  the  great  end 
of  his  policy.  We  are  decidedly  of  opinion  that  it  would 
have  been  fatal  to  comply.  Many  of  those  who  took  the 
side  of  the  King  on  this  question,  would  have  cursed  their 
own  loyality  if  they  had  seen  him  return  from  war  at  the 
head  of  twenty  thousand  troops,  accustomed  to  carnage  and 
free  quarters  in  Ireland. 

We  think,  with  Mr.  Hallam,  that  many  of  the  royalist 
nobility  and  gentry  were  true  Jfriends  to  the  constitution ; 
and  that,  but  for  the  solemn  protestations  by  which  the  king 
bound  himself  to  govern  according  to  the  law  for  the  future, 
they  never  would  have  joined  his  standard.  But  surely  they 
underrated  the  public  danger.  Falkland  is  commonly  se- 
lected as  the  most  respectable  specimen  of  this  class.  He 
was  indeed  a  man  of  great  talents,  and  of  great  virtues ; 
but,  we  apprehend,  infinitely  too  fastidious  for  public  life. 
He  did  not  perceive  that  in  such  times  as  those  on  which 
his  lot  had  fallen,  the  duty  of  a  statesman  is  to  choose  the 
better  cause,  and  to  stand  by  it,  in  spite  of  those  excesses 
by  which  every  cause,  however  good  in  itself,  will  be  dis- 
graced. The  present  evil  always  seemed  to  him  the  worst. 
He  was  always  going  backward  and  forward ;  but  it  should 
be  remembered  to  his  honour,  that  it  was  always  from  the 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  227 

stronger  to  the  weaker  side  that  he  deserted.  Whiles  Charles 
was  oppressing  the  people,  Falkland  was  a  resolute  cham- 
pion of  liberty.  He  attacked  Strafford.  He  even  concurred 
in  strong  measures  against  Episcopacy.  But  the  violence 
of  his  party  annoyed  him,  and  drove  him  to  the  other  party, 
to  be  equally  annoyed  there.  Dreading  the  success  of  the 
cause  which  he  had  espoused,  sickened  by  the  courtiers  of 
Oxford,  as  he  had  been  sickened  by  the  patriots  of  West- 
minster, yet  bound  by  honour  not  to  abandon  them,  he  pined 
away,  neglected  his  person,  went  about  moaning  for  peace, 
and  at  last  rushed  desperately  on  death,  as  the  best  refuge 
in  such  miserable  times.  If  he  had  lived  through  the  scenes 
that  followed,  we  have  little  doubt  that  he  would  have  con- 
demned himself  to  share  the  exile  and  beggary  of  the  royal 
family;  that  he  would  then  have  returned  to  oppose  all 
their  measures ;  that  he  would  have  been  sent  to  the  Tower 
by  the  Commons  as  a  disbeliever  in  the  Popish  Plot,  and 
by  the  king  as  an  accomplice  in  the  Rye-House  Plot ;  and 
that,  if  he  had  escaped  being  hanged,  first  by  Scroggs,  and 
then  by  Jeffries,  he  would,  after  manfully  opposing  James 
the  Second  through  his  whole  reign,  have  been  seized  with 
a  fit  of  compassion  at  the  very  moment  of  the  Revolution, 
have  voted  for  a  regency,  and  died  a  nonjuror. 

We  do  not  dispute  that  the  royal  party  contained  many 
excellent  men  and  excellent  citizens.  But  this  we  say — 
that  they  did  not  discern  those  times.  The  peculiar  glory 
of  the  Houses  of  Parliament  is,  that,  in  the  great  plague 
and  mortality  of  constitutions,  they  took  their  stand  be- 
tween the  living  and  the  dead.  At  the  very  crisis  of  our 
destiny,  at  the  very  moment  when  the  fate  which  had  passed 
on  every  other  nation  was  brought  about  to  pass  on  Eng- 
land, they  arrested  the  danger. 

Those  who  conceive  that  the  parliamentary  leaders  were 
desirous  merely  to  maintain  the  old  constitution,  and  those 
who  represent  them  as  conspiring  to  subvert  it,  are  equally 
in  error.  The  old  constitution,  as  we  have  attempted  to 
show,  could  not  be  maintained.  The  progress  of  time,  the 
increase  of  wealth,  the  diffusion  of  knowledge,  the  great 
change  in  the  European  system  of  war,  rendered  it  impos- 
sible that  any  of  the  monarchies  of  the  middle  ages  should 
continue  to  exist  on  the  old  footing.     The  prerogative  of 


228         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

the  crown  was  constantly  advancing.  If  the  privileges  of 
the  people  were  to  remain  absolutely  stationary,  they  would 
relatively  retrograde.  The  monarchical  and  democratical 
parts  of  the  government  were  placed  in  a  situation  not 
unlike  that  of  the  two  brothers  in  the  Fairy  Queen,  one  of 
whom  saw  the  soil  of  his  inheritance  daily  washed  away  by 
the  tide  and  joined  to  that  of  his  rival.  The  portions  had 
at  first  been  fairly  meted  out :  by  a  natural  and  constant 
transfer,  the  one  had  been  extended ;  the  other  had  dwin- 
dled to  nothing.  A  new  partition  or  a  compensation  was 
necessary  to  restore  the  original  equality. 

It  was  now  absolutely  necessary  to  violate  the  formal  part 
of  the  constitution,  in  order  to  preserve  its  spirit.  This 
might  have  been  done,  as  it  was  done  at  the  Revolution,  by 
expelling  the  reigning  family,  and  calling  to  the  throne 
princes,  who,  relying  solely  on  an  elective  title,  would  find 
it  necessary  to  respect  the  privileges  and  follow  the  advice 
of  the  assemblies  to  which  they  owed  every  thing,  to  pass 
every  bill  which  the  legislature  strongly  pressed  upon  them, 
and  to  fill  the  offices  of  state  with  men  in  whom  it  confided. 
But  as  the  two  Houses  did  not  choose  to  change  the  dynasty, 
it  was  necessary  that  they  should  do  directly  what  at  the 
Revolution  was  done  indirectly.  Nothing  is  more  usual 
than  to  hear  it  said,  that  if  the  Long  Parliament  had  con- 
tented itself  with  making  such  a  reform  in  the  government 
under  Charles  as  was  afterwards  made  under  William,  it 
would  have  had  the  highest  claim  to  national  gratitude ;  and 
that  in  its  violence  it  overshot  the  mark.  Rut  how  was  it 
possible  to  make  such  a  settlement  under  Charles  ?  Charles 
was  not,  like  William  and  the  princes  of  the  Hanoverian 
line,  bound  by  community  of  interests  and  dangers  to  the 
two  Houses.  It  was  therefore  necessary  that  they  should 
bind  him  by  treaty  and  statute. 

Mr.  Hallam  reprobates,  in  language  v/hich  has  a  little 
surprised  us,  the  nineteen  propositions  into  which  the  Par- 
liament has  digested  its  scheme.  We  will  ask  him  whether 
he  does  not  think  that,  if  James  the  Second  had  remained 
in  the  island,  and  had  been  sufi"ered,  as  he  probably  would 
in  that  case  have  been  suflfered,  to  keep  his  crown,  conditions 
to  the  full  as  hard  would  have  been  imposed  on  him  ?  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  Long  Parliament  had  pronounced  the 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  229 

departure  of  Charles  from  London  an  abdication,  and  had 
called  Essex  or  Northumberland  to  the  throne,  the  new 
prince  might  have  safely  been  suffered  to  reign  without 
such  restrictions;  his  situation  would  have  been  a  sufficient 
guaranty.  In  the  nineteen  propositions,  we  see  very  little  to 
blame  except  the  articles  against  the  Catholics.  These, 
however,  were  in  the  spirit  of  that  age ;  and  to  some  sturdy 
churchmen  in  our  own,  that  may  seem  to  p-alliate  even  the 
good  which  the  Long  Parliament  effected.  The  regulation 
with  respect  to  new  creations  of  Peers  is  the  only  other  arti- 
cle about  which  we  entertain  any  doubt. 

One  of  the  propositions  is,  that  the  judges  shall  hold  their 
offices  during  good  behaviour.  To  this  surely  no  exception 
will  be  taken.  The  right  of  directing  the  education  and 
marriage  of  the  princes  was  most  properly  claimed  by  the 
Parliament,  on  the  same  ground  on  which,  after  the  Ptevolu- 
tion,  it  was  enacted,  that  no  king,  on  pain  of  forfeiting  his 
throne,  should  espouse  a  papist.  Unless  we  condemn  the 
statesmen  of  the  Revolution,  who  conceived  that  England 
could  not  safely  be  governed  by  a  sovereign  married  to  a 
Catholic  queen,  we  can  scarcely  condemn  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment, because,  having  a  sovereign  so  situated,  they  thought 
it  necessary  to  place  him  under  strict  restraints.  The  influ- 
ence of  Henrietta  Maria  had  already  been  deeply  felt  in  po- 
litical affairs.  In  the  regulation  of  her  family,  in  the  educa- 
tion and  marriage  of  her  children,  it  was  still  more  likely  to 
be  felt.  There  might  be  another  Catholic  queen;  possibly, 
a  Catholic  king.  Little  as  we  are  disposed  to  join  in  the 
vulgar  clamour  on  this  subject,  we  think  that  such  an  event 
ought  to  be,  if  possible,  averted;  and  this  could  only  be 
done,  if  Charles  was  to  be  left  on  the  throne,  by  placing  his 
domestic  arrangements  under  the  control  of  Parliament. 

A  veto  on  the  appointment  of  ministers  was  demanded. 
But  this  veto  Parliament  had  virtually  possessed  ever  since 
the  Revolution.  It  is  no  doubt  very  far  better  that  this 
power  of  the  legislature  should  be  exercised  as  it  is  now  ex- 
ercised, when  any  great  occasion  calls  for  interference,  than 
that  at  every  change  it  should  have  to  signify  its  approba- 
tion or  disapprobation  in  form.  But,  unless  a  new  family 
had  been  placed  on  the  throne,  we  do  not  see  how  this  power 
could  have  been  exercised  as  it  is  now  exercised.     We  again 

Vol.  L— 20 


230  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

repeat,  that  no  restraints  which  could  be  imposed  on  the 
princes  who  reigned  after  the  Kevolution,  could  have  added 
to  the  security  which  their  title  afforded.  They  were  com- 
pelled to  court  their  parliaments.  But  from  Charles  nothing 
was  expected  which  was  not  set  down  in  the  bond. 

It  was  not  stipulated  that  the  king  should  give  up  his 
negative  on  acts  of  Parliament.  j3ut  the  Commons  had 
certainly  shown  a  strong  disposition  to  exact  this  security 
also.  ''Such  a  doctrine,"  says  Mr.  Hallam,  "was  in  this 
country  as  repugnant  to  the  whole  history  of  our  laws  as  it 
was  incompatible  with  the  subsistence  of  the  monarchy  in 
any  thing  more  than  a  nominal  pre-eminence."  Now  this 
article  has  been  as  completely  carried  into  effect  by  the 
Revolution,  as  if  it  had  been  formally  inserted  in  the  Bill 
of  Bights  and  the  Act  of  Settlement.  We  are  surprised,  wo 
confess,  that  Mr.  Hallam  should  attach  so  much  importance 
to  a  prerogative  which  has  not  been  exercised  for  a  hundred 
and  thirty  years,  which  probably  will  never  be  exercised 
again,  and  which  can  scarcely,  in  any  conceivable  case,  be 
exercised  for  a  salutary  purpose. 

But  the  great  security,  that  without  which  every  other 
would  have  been  insufficient,  was  the  power  of  the  sword. 
This  both  parties  thoroughly  understood.  The  Parliament 
insisted  on  having  the  command  of  the  militia,  and  the  di- 
rection of  the  Irish  war.  "By  Grod,  not  for  an  hour!"  ex- 
claimed the  king.  "Keep  the  militia,"  said  the  queen, 
after  the  defeat  of  the  royal  party,  "keep  the  militia;  that 
will  bring  back  every  thing."  That,  by  the  old  constitution, 
no  military  authority  was  lodged  in  the  Parliament,  Mr. 
Hallam  has  clearly  shown.  That  it  is  a  species  of  power 
which  ought  not  to  be  permanently  lodged  in  large  and  di- 
vided assemblies,  must,  we  think,  in  fairness,  be  conceded. 
Opposition,  publicity,  long  discussion,  frequent  compromise, 
these  are  the  characteristics  of  the  proceedings  in  such 
bodies.  Unity,  secresy,  decision,  are  the  qualities  which 
military  arrangements  require.  This  undoubtedly  was  an 
evil.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  at  such  a  crisis  to  trust  such 
a  king  with  the  very  weapon  which,  in  hands  less  dangerous, 
had  destroyed  so  many  free  constitutions,  would  have  been 
the  extreme  of  rashness.  The  jealousy  with  which  the  oli- 
garchy of  Venice  and  the  States  of  Holland  regarded  their 


hallam's  constitutional  histoey.  231 

generals  and  armies,  induced  them  perpetually  to  interfere 
in  matters  of  which  they  were  incompetent  to  judge.  This 
policy  secured  them  against  military  usurpation,  but  placed 
them  under  great  disadvantages  in  war.  The  uncontrolled 
power  which  the  king  of  France  exercised  over  his  troops 
enabled  him  to  conquer  his  enemies,  but  enabled  him  also 
to  oppress  his  people.  Was  there  any  intermediate  course? 
None,  we  confess,  altogether  free  from  objection.  But,  on 
the  whole,  we  conceive  that  the  best  measure*  would  have 
been  that  which  the  Parliament  over  and  over  proposed; 
that  for  a  limited  time  the  power  of  the  sword  should  be 
left  to  the  two  Houses,  and  that  it  should  revert  to  the  crown 
when  the  constitution  should  be  firmly  established ;  when 
the  new  securities  of  freedom  should  be  so  far  strengthened 
by  prescription,  that  it  would  be  difficult  to  employ  even  a 
standing  army  for  the  purpose  of  subverting  them. 

Mr.  Hallam  thinks  that  the  dispute  might  easily  have 
been  compromised,  by  enacting  that  the  king  should  have 
no  power  to  keep  a  standing  army  on  foot  without  the  con- 
sent of  Parliament.  He  reasons  as  if  the  question  had  been 
merely  theoretical — as  if  at  that  time  no  army  had  been 
wanted.  '^The  kingdom,''  he  says,  ^^  might  have  well  dis- 
pensed, in  that  age,  with  any  military  organization.''  Now, 
we  think  that  Mr.  Hallam  overlooks  the  most  important  cir- 
cumstance in  the  whole  case.  Ireland  was  at  that  moment 
in  rebellion ;  and  a  great  expedition  would  obviously  be  ne- 
cessary to  reduce  that  kingdom  to  obedience.  The  Houses 
had,  therefore,  to  consider,  not  an  abstract  question  of  law, 
but  an  urgent  practical  question,  directly  involving  the 
safety  of  the  state.  They  had  to  consider  the  expediency 
of  immediately  giving  a  great  army  to  a  king,  who  was  at 
least  as  desirous  to  put  down  the  Parliament  of  England  as 
to  conquer  the  insurgents  of  Ireland. 

Of  course,  we  do  not  mean  to  defend  all  their  measures. 
Far  from  it.  There  never  was  a  perfect  man;  it  would, 
therefore,  be  the  height  of  absurdity  to  expect  a  perfect 
party  or  a  perfect  assembly.  For  large  bodies  are  far  more 
likely  to  err  than  individuals.  The  passions  are  inflamed 
by  sympathy;  the  fear  of  punishment  and  the  sense  of  shame 
are  diminished  by  partition.  Every  day  we  see  men  do  for  their 
faction  what  they  would  die  rather  than  do  for  themselves. 


232         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

No  private  quarrel  ever  happens,  in  which  the  right  and 
wrong  are  so  exquisitely  divided,  that  all  the  right  lies  on 
one  side,  and  all  the  wrong  on  the  other.  But  here  was  a 
schism  which  separated  a  great  nation  into  two  parties.  Of 
these  parties,  each  was  composed  of  many  smaller  parties. 
Each  contained  many  members,  who  differed  far  less  from 
their  moderate  opponents  than  from  their  violent  allies. 
Each  reckoned  among  its  supporters  many  who  were  deter- 
mined in  their  choice  by  some  accident  of  birth,  of  connec- 
tion, or  of  local  situation.  Each  of  them  attracted  to  itself 
in  multitudes  those  fierce  and  turbid  spirits,  to  whom  the 
clouds  and  whirlwinds  of  the  political  hurricane  are  the 
atmosphere  of  life.  A  party,  like  a  camp,  has  its  sutlers 
and  camp-followers,  as  well  as  its  soldiers.  In  its  progress 
it  collects  round  it  a  vast  retinue,  composed  of  people  who 
thrive  by  its  custom,  or  are  amused  by  its  display,  who  may 
be  sometimes  reckoned,  in  an  ostentatious  enumeration,  as 
forming  a  part  of  it,  but  who  gave  no  aid  to  its  operations, 
and  take  but  a  languid  interest  in  its  success :  who  relax  its 
discipline  and  dishonour  its  flag  by  their  irregularities;  and 
who,  after  a  disaster,  are  perfectly  ready  to  cut  the  throats 
and  rifle  the  baggage  of  their  companions. 

Thus  it  is  in  every  great  division :  and  thus  it  was  in  our 
civil  war.  On  both  sides  there  was,  undoubtedly,  enough 
of  crime  and  enough  of  error,  to  disgust  any  man  who  did 
not  reflect  that  the  whole  history  of  the  species  is  nothing 
but  a  comparison  of  crimes  and  errors.  Misanthropy  is  not 
the  temper  which  qualifies  a  man  to  act  in  great  affairs,  or 
to  judge  of  them. 

'^  Of  the  Parliament,''  says  Mr.  Hallam,  "it  may  be  said, 
I  think,  with  not  greater  severity  than  truth,  that  scarce  two 
or  three  public  acts  of  justice,  humanity,  or  generosity,  and 
very  few  of  political  wisdom  or  courage,  are  recorded  of 
them,  from  their  quarrel  with  the  king  to  their  expulsion 
by  Cromwell.''  Those  who  may  agree  with  us  in  the  opinion 
which  we  have  expressed  as  to  the  original  demands  of  the 
Parliament,  will  scarcely  concur  in  this  strong  censure. 
The  propositions  which  the  Houses  made  at  Oxford,  at  Ux- 
bridgc,  and  at  Newcastle,  were  in  strict  accordance  with 
these  demands.  In  the  darkest  period  of  the  war,  they 
showed  no  disposition  to  concede  any  vital  principle.     In 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  233 

the  fulness  of  their  success,  they  showed  no  disposition  to 
encroach  beyond  these  limits.  In  this  respect  we  canoe* 
but  thmk  that  they  showed  justice  and  generosity,  as  well 
as  political  wisdom  and  courage. 

The  Parliament  was  certainly  f-ir  from  faultless      \^e 
fully  agree  with  Mr.  Hallam  in  reprobating  their  treatment 
ot  Laud.     For  the  individual,  indeed,  we  entertain  a  more 
unmitigated  contempt  thar  for  any  other  character  in  our 
history.     The  fondness  with  which  a  portion  of  the  church 
regards  his  memory,  can  be  compared  only  to  that  perver- 
sity of  affection  which  sometimes  leads  a  mother  to  select 
the  monster  or  the  idiot  of  the  family  as  the  object  of  her 
especial   favour.     Mr.   Hallam  has  incidentally  observed, 
that  m  the  correspondence  of  Laud  with  Strafford,  there  are 
no  indications  of  a  sense  of  duty  towards  God  or  man:    The 
admirers  of  the  archbishop  have,  in  consequence,  inflicted 
upon  the  public  a  crowd  of  extracts,  designed  to  prove  the 
contrary.      Now,  in    all   those   passages,  we   see   nothing 
which  a  prelate  as  wicked  as  Pope  Alexander  or  Cardinal 
Dubois  might  not  have  written.     They  indicate  no  sense  of 
duty  to  God  or  man;  but  simply  a  strong  interest  in  the 
prosperity  and  dignity  of  the  order  to  which  the  writer  be- 
longed; an  interest  which,  when  kept  within  certain  limits, 
does  not  deserve  censure,  but  which  can  never  be  considered 
as  a  virtue.     Laud  is  anxious  to  accommodate  satisfactorily 
the  disputes  in  the  University  of  Dublin.     He  regi-ets  to 
hear  that  a  church  is  used  as  a  stable,  and  that  the  benefices 
of  Ireland  are  very  poor.     He  is  desirous  that,  however 
small  a  congregation  may  be,  service  should  be  regularly 
performed.     He  expresses  a  wish  that  the  judges  of  the 
court  before  which  questions  of  tithe  are  generally  brought, 
should  be  selected  with  a  view  to  the  interest  of  the  clergy! 
All  this  may  be  very  proper;  and  it  may  be  very  proper 
that  an  alderman  should  stand  up  for  the  tolls  of  his  borough, 
and  an  East  Indian  director  for  the  charter  of  his  company! 
But  it  is  ridiculous  to  say  that  these  things  indicate  piety 
and  benevolence.     No  primate,  though  he  were  the  most 
abandoned  of  mankind,  would  wish  to  see  the  body,  with 
the  consequence  of  which  his  own  consequence  was  identical, 
degraded  in  the  public  estimation  by  internal  dissensions, 

20* 


234         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

by  the  ruinous  state  of  its  edificeS;  and  the  slovenly  perform- 
ance of  its  rites.  We  willingly  acknowledge  that  the  particular 
letters  in  question  have  very  little  harm  in  them  3 — a  com- 
pliment which  cannot  often  be  paid  either  to  the  writings 
or  to  the  actions  of  Laud. 

Bad  as  the  archbishop  was,  however,  he  was  not  a  traitor 
within  the  statute.  Nor  was  he  by  any  means  so  formid- 
able as  to  be  a  proper  subject  for  a  retrospective  ordinance 
of  the  legislature.  His  mind  had  not  expansion  enough  to 
comprehend  a  great  scheme,  good  or  bad.  His  oppressive 
acts  were  not,  like  those  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  parts  of 
an  extensive  system.  They  were  the  luxuries  in  which  a 
mean  and  irritable  disposition  indulges  itself  from  day  to 
day — the  excesses  natural  to  a  little  mind  in  a  great  place. 
The  severest  punishment  which  the  two  Houses  could  have 
inflicted  on  him  would  have  been  to  set  him  at  liberty,  and 
send  him  to  Oxford.  There  he  might  have  stayed,  tortured 
by  his  own  diabolical  temper,  hungering  for  Puritans  to 
pillory  and  mangle,  plaguing  the  Cavaliers,  for  want  of  some- 
body else  to  plague,  with  his  peevishness  and  absurdity, 
performing  grimaces  and  antics  in  the  cathedral,  continuing 
that  incomparable  diary,  which  we  never  see  without  for- 
getting the  vices  of  his  heart  in  the  abject  imbecility  of  his 
intellect;  minuting  down  his  dreams,  counting  the  drops  of 
blood  which  fell  from  his  nose,  watching  the  direction  of 
the  salt,  and  listening  for  the  note  of  the  screech-owl  I  Con- 
temptuous mercy  was  the  only  vengeance  which  it  became 
the  Parliament  to  take  on  such  a  ridiculous  old  bigot. 

The  Houses,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  committed  great 
errors  in  the  conduct  of  the  war;  or  rather  one  great  error, 
which  brought  their  affairs  into  a  condition  requiring  the 
most  perilous  expedients.  The  parliamentary  leaders  of 
what  may  be  called  the  first  generation,  Essex,  Manchester, 
Northumberland,  Hollis,  even  Pym — all  the  most  eminent 
men,  in  short,  JEIampden  excepted,  were  inclined  to  half- 
measures.  They  dreaded  a  decisive  victory  almost  as  much 
as  a  decisive  overthrow.  They  wished  to  bring  the  king 
into  a  situation  which  might  render  it  necessary  for  him  to 
grant  their  just  and  wise  demands;  but  not  to  subvert  the 
constitution  or  to  change  the  dynasty.  They  were  afraid 
of  serving  the  pm-poses  of  those  fiercer  and  more  deter- 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  235 

mined  enemies  of  monarchy,  who  now  began  to  show  them- 
selves in  the  lower  ranks  of  the  party.  The  war  was, 
therefore,  conducted  in  a  languid  and  inefficient  manner. 
A  resolute  leader  might  have  brought  it  to  a  close  in  a 
month.  At  the  end  of  three  campaigns,  however,  the  event 
was  still  dubious;  and  that  it  had  not  been  decided  unfa- 
vourable to  the  cause  of  liberty,  was  principally  owing  to 
the  skill  and  energy  which  the  more  violent  Koundheads  had 
displayed  in  subordinate  situations.  The  conduct  of  Fair- 
fax and  Cromwell  at  Marston  had  exhibited  a  remarkable 
contrast  to  that  of  Essex  at  Edgehill,  and  Waller  at  Lans- 
down. 

If  there  be  any  truth  established  by  the  universal  expe- ' 
rience  of  nations,  it  is  this  :  that  to  carry  the  spirit  of  peace 
into  war  is  a  weak  and  cruel  policy.     The  time  of  negotia- 
tion is  the  time  for  deliberation  and  delay.     But  when  an 
extreme  case  calls  for  that  remedy  which  is  in  its  own  na-  \ 
ture  most  violent,  and  which,  in  such  cases,  is  a  remedy  i 
only  because  it  is  violent,  it  is  idle  to  think  of  mitigating  i 
and  diluting.     Languid  war  can  do  nothing  which  negotia- 
ion  or  submission  will  not  do  better :  and  to  act  on  any 
other  principle  is   not  to  save  blood   and  money,  but  to* 
squander  them.  '  -^ 

This  the  parliamentary  leaders  found.  The  third  year  of 
hostilities  was  drawing  to  a  close;  and  they  had  not  con- 
quered the  king.  They  had  not  obtained  even  those  advan- 
tages which  they  had  expected,  from  a  policy  obviously 
erroneous  in  a  military  point  of  view.  They  had  wished  to 
husband  their  resources.  They  now  found  that,  in  enter- 
prises like  theirs,  parsimony  is  the  worst  profusion.  They 
had  hoped  to  effect  a  reconciliation.  The  event  taught  them 
that  the  best  way  to  conciliate  is  to  bring  the  work  of  de- 
struction to  a  speedy  termination.  By  their  moderation 
many  lives  and  much  property  had  been  wasted.  The  angry 
passions  which,  if  the  contest  had  been  short,  would  have  died 
away  almost  as  soon  as  they  appeared,  had  fixed  themselves 
in  the  form  of  deep  and  lasting  hatred.  A  military  caste 
had  grown  up.  Those  who  had  been  induced  to  take  up 
arms  by  the  patriotic  feelings  of  citizens,  had  begun  to  en- 
tertain the  professional  feelings  of  soldiers.  Above  all,  the 
leaders  of  the  party  had  forfeited  its  confidence.    If  they  had^ 


236  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINaS. 

by  their  valour  and  abilities,  gained  a  complete  victory,  their 
influence  might  have  been  sufficient  to  prevent  their  asso- 
ciates from  abusing  it.  It  is  now  necessary  to  choose  more 
resolute  and  uncompromising  commanders.  Unhappily,  the 
illustrious  man  who  alone  united  in  himself  all  the  talents 
and  virtues  which  the  crisis  required,  who  alone  could  have 
saved  his  country  from  the  present  dangers  without  plunging 
her  into  others,  who  alone  could  have  united  all  the  friends 
of  liberty  in  obedience  to  his  commanding  genius  and  his 
venerable  name,  was  no  more.  Something  might  still  be 
done.  The  Houses  might  still  avert  that  worst  of  all  evils, 
the  triumphant  return  of  an  imperious  and  unprincipled 
master.  They  might  still  preserve  London  from  all  the 
horrors  of  rapine,  massacre,  and  lust.  But  their  hopes  of  a 
victory  as  spotless  as  their  cause,  of  a  reconciliation  which 
might  knit  together  the  hearts  of  all  honest  Englishmen  for 
the  defence  of  the  public  good,  of  durable  tranquillity,  of 
temperate  freedom,  were  buried  in  the  grave  of  Hampden. 

The  self-denying  ordinance  was  passed,  and  the  army  was 
remodelled.  These  measures  were  undoubtedly  full  of 
danger.  But  all  that  was  left  to  the  Parliament  was  to  take 
the  less  of  two  dangers.  And  we  think  that,  even  if  they 
could  have  accurately  foreseen  all  that  followed,  their  deci- 
sion ought  to  have  been  the  same.  Under  any  circumstances, 
we  should  have  preferred  Cromwell  to  Charles.  But  there 
could  be  no  comparison  between  Cromwell  and  Charles 
victorious — Charles  restored,  Charles  enabled  to  feed  fat  all 
the  hungry  grudges  of  his  smiling  rancour  and  his  cringing 
pride.  The  next  visit  of  his  majesty  to  his  faithful  Com- 
mons would  have  been  more  serious  than  that  with  which 
he  last  honoured  them ;  more  serious  than  that  which  their 
own  general  paid  them  some  years  after.  The  king  would 
scarce  have  been  content  with  collaring  Marten,  and  pray- 
ing that  the  Lord  would  deliver  him  from  Vane.  If,  by  fatal 
mismanagement,  nothing  was  left  to  England  but  a  choice 
of  tyrants,  the  last  tyrant  whom  she  should  have  chosen  was 
Charles. 

From  the  apprehension  of  this  worst  evil  the  Houses  were 
soon  delivered  by  their  new  leaders.  The  armies  of  Charles 
were  everywhere  routed;  his  fastnesses  stormed;  his  party 
humbled  and  subjugated.     The  king  himself  fell  into  tht. 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  237 

hands  of  the  Parliament;  and  both  the  king  and  the  Parlia- 
ment soon  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  armj.  The  fate  of  both 
the  cajDtives  was  the  same.  Both  were  treated  alternately 
with  respect  and  with  insult.  At  length,  the  natural  life  of 
the  one  and  the  political  life  of  the  other  were  terminated 
by  violence;  and  the  power  for  which  both  had  struggled 
was  united  in  a  single  hand.  Men  naturally  sympathize 
with  the  calamities  of  individuals ;  but  they  are  inclined  to 
look  on  a  fallen  party  with  contempt  rather  than  with  pity. 
Thus  misfortune  turned  the  greatest  of  Parliaments  into 
the  despised  Rump,  and  the  worst  of  kings  into  the  Blessed 
Martyr. 

Mr.  Hallam  decidedly  condemns  the  execution  of  Charles; 
and  in  all  that  he  says  on  that  subject,  we  heartily  agree. 
"SYe  ^lly  concur  with  him  in  thinking  that  a  great  social 
schism,  such  as  the  civil  war,  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  an 
ordinary  treason;  and  that  the  vanquished  ought  to  be 
treated  according  to  the  rules,  not  of  municipal,  but  of 
international  law.  In  this  case  the  distinction  is  of  the  less 
importance,  because  both  international  and  municipal  law 
were  in  favour  of  Charles. 

He  was  a  prisoner  of  war  by  the  former,  a  king  by  the 
latter.  By  neither  was  he  a  traitor.  If  he  had  been  suc- 
cessful, and  had  put  his  leading  opponents  to  death,  he 
would  have  deserved  severe  censure;  and  this  without 
reference  to  the  justice  or  injustice  of  his  cause.  Yet  the 
opponents  of  Charles,  it  must  be  admitted,  were  technically 
guilty  of  treason.  He  might  have  sent  them  to  the  scaffold 
without  violating  any  established  principle  of  jurispru- 
dence. He  would  not  have  been  compelled  to  overturn 
the  whole  constitution  in  order  to  reach  them.  Here  his 
own  case  differed  widely  from  theirs.  Not  only  was  his 
condemnation  in  itself  a  measure  which  only  the  strongest 
necessity  could  vindicate,  but  it  could  not  be  procured 
without  taking  several  previous  steps,  every  one  of  which 
would  have  required  the  strongest  necessity  to  vindicate  it. 
It  could  not  be  procured  without  dissolving  the  govern- 
ment by  military  force,  without  establishing  precedents  of 
the  most  dangerous  description,  without  creating  difficulties 
which  the  next  ten  years  were  spent  in  removing,  without 
pulling  down  institutions  which  it  soon  became  necessary 


238        macaulay's  miscellaneous  ^VRiTmas. 

to  reconstruct;  and  setting  up  others  which  almost  every 
man  was  soon  impatient  to  destroy.  It  was  necessary  to 
strike  the  House  of  Lords  out  of  the  constitution,  to  exclude 
members  of  the  House  of  Commons  by  force,  to  make  a 
new  crime,  a  new  tribunal,  a  new  mode  of  procedure. 
The  whole  legislative  and  judicial  systems  were  trampled 
down  for  the  purpose  of  taking  a  single  head.  Not  only 
those  parts  of  the  constitution  which  the  republicans  were 
desirous  to  destroy,  but  those  which  they  wished  to  reiain 
and  exalt,  were  deeply  injured  by  these  transactions. 
High  Courts  of  Justice  began  to  usurp  the  functions  of 
juries.  The  remaining  delegates  of  the  people  were  soon 
driven  from  their  seats  by  the  same  military  violence  which 
had  enabled  them  to  exclude  their  colleagues. 

If  Charles  had  been  the  last  of  his  line,  there  would 
have  been  an  intelligible  reason  for  putting  him  to  death. 
But  the  blow  which  terminated  his  life,  at  once  transferred 
the  allegiance  of  every  royalist  to  an  heir,  and  an  heir  who 
was  at  liberty.  To  kill  the  individual  was  truly,  under 
such  circumstances,  not  to  destroy,  but  to  release  the  king. 

We  detest  the  character  of  Charles;  but  a  man  ought 
not  to  be  removed  by  a  law  ex  post  facto,  even  constitu- 
tionally procured,  merely  because  he  is  detestable.  He 
must  also  be  very  dangerous.  We  can  scarcely  conceive 
that  any  danger  which  a  state  can  apprehend  from  anj 
individual  could  justify  the  violent  measures  which  were 
necessary  to  procure  a  sentence  against  Charles.  But,  in 
fact,  the  danger  amounted  to  nothing.  There  was  indeed 
danger  from  the  attachment  of  a  large  party  to  his  office. 
But  this  danger,  his  execution  only  increased.  His  per- 
sonal influence  was  little  indeed.  He  had  lost  the  confi- 
dence of  every  party.  Churchmen,  Catholics,  Presbyte- 
rians, Independents,  his  enemies,  his  friends,  his  tools, 
English,  Scotch,  Irish,  all  divisions  and  subdivisions  of  his 
people  had  been  deceived  by  him.  His  most  attached 
councillors  turned  away  with  shame  and  anguish  from  his 
false  and  hollow  policy; — plot  intertwined  with  plot, 
mine  sprung  beneath  mine,  agents  disowned,  promises 
evaded,  one  pledge  given  in  private,  another  in  public. 
"Oh,  Mr.  Secretary,^'  says  Clarendon,  in  a  letter  to 
Nicholas,  "those  stratagems  have  given  me  more  sad  hours 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  239 

than  all  the  misfortunes  in  war  which  have  befallen  the 
King;  and  look  like  the  effects  of  God's  anger  towards  iis." 

The  abilities  of  Charles  were  not  formidable.  His  taste 
in  the  fine  arts  was  indeed  exquisite.  He  was  as  good  a 
writer  and  speaker  as  any  modern  sovereign  has  been.  But 
he  was  not  fit  for  active  life.  In  negotiation,  he  was  always 
trying  to  dupe  others,  and  duping  only  himself.  As  a  soldier, 
he  was  feeble,  dilatory,  and  miserably  wanting,  not  in  per- 
sonal courage,  but  in  the  presence  of  mind  which  his  sta- 
tion required.  His  delay  at  Grloucester  saved  the  Parlia- 
mentary party  from  destruction.  At  Naseby,  in  the  very 
crisis  of  his  fortune,  his  want  of  self-possession  spread  a  fatal 
panic  through  his  army.  The  story  which  Clarendon  tells 
of  that  afi"air  reminds  us  of  the  excuses  by  which  Bessus  and 
Bobadil  explain  their  cudgellings.  A  Scotch  nobleman,  it 
seems,  begged  the  king  not  to  run  upon  his  death,  took  hold 
of  his  bridle,  and  turned  his  horse  round.  No  man  who 
had  much  value  for  his  life  would  have  tried  to  perform  the 
same  friendly  office  on  that  day  for  Oliver  Cromwell. 

One  thing,  and  one  alone,  could  make  Charles  dangerous 
— a  violent  death.  His  tyranny  could  not  break  the  high 
spirit  of  the  English  people.  His  arms  could  not  conquer, 
his  arts  could  not  deceive  them ;  but  his  humiliation  and  his 
execution  melted  them  into  a  generous  compassion.  Men 
who  die  on  a  scafi"old  for  political  ofi'ences  almost  always 
die  well.  The  eyes  of  thousands  are  fixed  upon  them.  Ene- 
mies and  admirers  are  watching  their  demeanour.  Every 
tone  of  voice,  every  change  of  colour,  is  to  go  down  to  pos- 
terity. Escape  is  impossible.  Supplication  is  vain.  In  such 
a  situation,  pride  and  despair  have  often  been  known  to  nerve 
the  weakest  minds  with  fortitude  adequate  to  the  occasion. 
Charles  died  patiently  and  bravely;  not  more  patiently  or 
bravely,  indeed,  than  many  other  victims  of  political  rage ; 
not  more  patiently  or  bravely  than  his  own  Judges,  who 
were  not  only  killed,  but  tortured,  or  than  Yane,  who  had 
always  been  considered  as  a  timid  man.  However,  his  con- 
duct during  his  trial  and  at  his  execution  made  a  prodigious 
impression.  His  subjects  began  to  love  his  memory  as 
heartily  as  they  had  hated  his  person;  and  posterity  has  esti- 
mated his  character  from  his  death,  rather  than  from  his  life. 

To  represent  Charles  as  a  martyr  in  the  cause  of  Epis- 


240         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

copacy  is  absurd.  Those  wlio  put  him  to  death  cared  aa 
little  for  the  Assembly  of  Divines  as  for  the  Convocation; 
and  would,  in  all  probability,  only  have  hated  him  tke  more 
if  he  had  agreed  to  set  up  the  Presbyterian  discipline;  and, 
in  spite  of  the  opinion  of  Mr.  Hallam,  we  are  inclined  to 
think  that  the  attachment  of  Charles  to^the  Church  of  Eng- 
land was  altogether  political.  Human  nature  is  indeed  so 
capricious,  that  there  may  be  a  single  sensitive  point  in  a 
conscience  which  everywhere  else  is  callous.  A  man  with- 
out truth  or  humanity  may  have  some  strange  scruples  about 
a  trifle.  There  was  once  a  devout  warrior  in  the  royal  camp, 
whose  piety  bore  a  great  resemblance  to  that  which  is 
ascribed  to  the  king.  We  mean  Colonel  Turner.  That  gal- 
lant cavalier  was  hanged,  after  the  Restoration,  for  a  flagi- 
tious burglary.  At  the  gallows,  he  told  the  crowd  that  his 
mind  received  great  consolation  from  one  reflection — he  had 
always  taken  ofi"  his  hat  when  he  went  into  a  church !  The 
character  of  Charles  would  scarcely  rise  in  our  estimation, 
if  we  believed  that  he  was  pricked  in  conscience  after  the 
manner  of  this  worthy  loyalist;  and  that,  while  violating  all 
the  first  rules  of  Christian  morality,  he  was  sincerely  scru- 
pulous about  church-government.  But  we  acquit  him  of 
such  weakness.  In  1641,  he  deliberate^  confirmed  the 
Scotch  declaration,  which  stated  that  the  government  of  the 
church  by  archbishops  and  bishops  was  contrary  to  the  word 
of  God.  In  1645,  he  appears  to  have  offered  to  set  up 
Popery  in  Ireland,  That  a  king  who  had  established  the 
Presbyterian  religion  in  one  kingdom,  and  who  was  willing 
to  establish,  the  Catholic  religion  in  another,  should  have 
insurmountable  scruples  about  the  ecclesiastical  constitution 
of  the  third,  is  altogether  incredible.  He  himself  says,  in  his 
letters,  that  he  looks  on  Episcopacy  as  a  stronger  support  of 
of  monarchical  power  than  even  the  army.  From  causes 
which  we  have  already  considered,  the  Established  Church 
had  been,  since  the  Reformation,  the  great  bulwark  of  the 
prerogative.  Charles  wished  therefore  to  preserve  it.  He 
thought  himself  necessary  both  to  the  Parliament  and  to  the 
army.  He  did  not  foresee,  till  too  late,  that  by  paltering 
with  the  Presbyterians,  he  should  put  both  them  and  himself 
into  the  power  of  a  fiercer  and  more  daring  party.  If  he 
had  foreseen  it,  we  suspect  that  the  royal  blood,  which  still 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  24] 

cries  to  Heaven  every  thirtieth  of  January  for  judgments, 
only  to  be  averted  by  salt  fish  and  egg-sauce,  would  never 
have  been  shed.  One  who  had  swallowed  the  Scotch  Decla- 
ration would  scarcely  strain  at  the  Covenant. 

The  death  of  Charles,  and  the  strong  measures  which  led 
to  it,  raised  Cromwell  to  a  height  of  power  fatal  to  the  infant 
commonwealth.  No  men  occupy  so  splendid  a  place  in 
history  as  those  who  have  founded  monarchies  on  the  ruins 
of  republican  institutions.  Their  glory,  if  not  of  the  purest, 
is  assuredly  of  the  most  seductive  and  dazzling  kind.  In 
nations  broken  to  the  curb,  in  nations  long  accustomed  to 
be  transferred  from  one  tyrant  to  another,  a  man  without 
eminent  qualities  may  easily  gain  supreme  power.  The  de- 
fection of  a  troop  of  guards,  a  conspiracy  of  eunuchs,  a 
popular  tumult,  might  place  an  indolent  senator  or  a  brutal 
soldier  on  the  throne  of  the  Roman  world.  Similar  revolu- 
tions have  often  occurred  in  the  despotic  states  of  Asia. 
But  a  community  which  has  heard  the  voice  of  truth,  and 
experienced  the  pleasures  of  liberty,  in  which  the  merits  of 
statesmen  and  of  systems  are  freely  canvassed,  in  which 
obedience  is  paid,  not  to  persons,  but  to  laws,  in  which 
magistrates  are  regarded  not  as  the  lords,  but  as  the  ser- 
vants of  the  public,  in  which  the  excitement  of  party  is  a 
necessary  of  life,  in  which  political  warfare  is  reduced  to  a 
system  of  tactics; — such  a  community  is  not  easily  reduced 
to  servitude.  Beasts  of  burden  may  easily  be  managed  by 
a  new  master ;  but  will  the  wild  ass  submit  to  the  bonds  ? 
will  the  unicorn  serve  and  abide  by  the  crib  ?  will  leviathan 
hold  out  his  nostrils  to  the  hook  ?  The  mythological  con- 
queror of  the  East,  whose  enchantments  reduced  the  wild 
beasts  to  the  tameness  of  domestic  cattle,  and  who  harnessed 
lions  and  tigers  to  his  chariot,  is  but  an  imperfect  type  of 
those  extraordinary  minds  which  have  thrown  a  spell  on  the 
fierce  spirits  of  nations  unaccustomed  to  control,  and  have 
compelled  raging  factions  to  obey  their  reins  and  swell  their 
triumph.  The  enterprise,  be  it  good  or  bad,  is  one  which 
requires  a  truly  great  man.  It  demands  courage,  activity, 
energy,  wisdom,  firmness,  conspicuous  virtues,  or  vices  so 
splendid  and  alluring  as  to  resemble  virtues. 

Those  who  have  succeeded  in  this  arduous  undertaking 
form  a  very  small  and  a  very  remarkable  class.    Parents  of 

Vol.  I.— 21 


242        macaulay's  miscellaneous  ^vritings. 

tyranny,  but  heirs  of  freedom^  kings  among  citizens,  citizens 
among  kings,  they  unite  in  themselves  the  characteristics 
of  the  system  which  springs  from  them,  and  of  the  system 
from  which  they  have  sprung.  Their  reigns  shine  with  a 
double  light,  the  last  and  dearest  rays  of  departing  freedom, 
mingled  with  the  first  and  brightest  glories  of  empire  in  its 
dawn.  Their  high  qualities  lend  to  despotism  itself  a  charm 
drawn  from  the  institutions  under  which  they  were  formed, 
and  which  they  have  destroyed.  They  resemble  Europeans 
who  settle  within  the  tropics,  and  carry  thither  the  strength 
and  the  energetic  habits  acquired  in  regions  more  propitious 
to  the  constitution.  They  differ  as  widely  from  princes 
nursed  in  the  purple  of  imperial  cradles,  as  the  companions 
of  Gama  from  their  dwarfish  and  imbecile  progeny,  which, 
born  in  a  climate  unfavourable  to  its  growth  and  beauty, 
degenerates  more  and  more,  at  every  descent,  from  the 
qualities  of  the  original  conquerors. 

In  this  class,  three  men  stand  pre-eminent;  Cassar,  Crom- 
well, and  Bonaparte.  The  highest  place  in  this  remarkable 
triumvirate  belongs  undoubtedly  to  Cassar.  He  united  the 
talents  of  Bonaparte  to  those  of  Cromwell ;  and  he  possessed 
also,  what  neither  Cromwell  nor  Bonaparte  possessed, 
learning,  taste,  wit,  eloquence,  the  sentiments  and  the 
manners  of  an  accomplished  gentleman. 

Between  Cromwell  and  Napoleon  Mr.  Hallam  has  insti- 
tuted a  parallel,  scarcely  less  ingenious  than  that  which 
Burke  has  drawn  between  Bichard  Coeur  de  Lion  and 
Charles  the  Twelfth  of  Sweden.  In  this  parallel,  however, 
and  indeed  throughout  his  work,  we  think  that  he  hardly 
gives  Cromwell  fair  measure.  "Cromweiy  says  he,  ^'far 
unlike  his  antitype,  never  showed  any  signs  of  a  legisla- 
tive mind,  or  any  desire  to  place  his  renown  on  that 
noblest  basis,  the  amelioration  of  social  institutions."  The 
difference,  in  this  respect,  we  conceive,  was  not  in  the 
characters  of  the  men,  but  in  the  characters  of  the  revolu- 
tions by  means  of  which  they  rose  to  power.  The  civil 
war  in  England  had  been  undertaken  to  defend  and  re- 
store ;  the  republicans  of  France  set  themselves  to  destroy. 
In  England,  the  principles  of  the  common  law  had  never 
been  disturbed ;  and  most  even  of  its  forms  had  been  held 
eacred.    In  France,  the  law  and  its  ministers  had  been  swept 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  243 

away  together.  In  France,  therefore,  legislation  necessarily 
became  the  first  business  of  the  first  settled  government 
which  rose  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  system.  The  admirers 
of  Inigo  Jones  have  always  maintained  that  his  works  are 
inferior  to  those  of  Sir  Christopher  "Wren,  only  because  the 
great  fire  in  London  gave  to  the  latter  such  a  field  for  the 
display  of  his  powers,  as  no  architect  in  the  history  of  the 
world  ever  possessed.  Similar  allowance  must  be  made  for 
Cromwell.  If  he  erected  little  that  wag  new,  it  was  because 
there  had  been  no  general  devastation  to  clear  a  space  for 
him.  As  it  was,  he  reformed  the  representative  system  in 
a  most  judicious  manner.  He  rendered  the  administration 
of  justice  uniform  throughout  the  island.  We  will  quote  a 
passage  from  his  speech  to  the  Parliament  in  September, 
1656,  which  contains,  we  think,  stronger  indications  of  a 
legislative  mind  than  are  to  be  found  in  the  whole  range 
of  orations  delivered  on  such  occasions  before  or  since. 

^' There  is  one  general  grievance  in  the  nation.  It  is  the 
law.  ...  I  think,  I  may  say  it,  I  have  as  eminent  judges 
in  this  land  as  have  been  had,  or  that  the  nation  has  had 
for  these  many  years.  Truly,  I  could  be  particular  as  to 
the  executive  part,  to  the  administration ;  but  that  would 
trouble  you.  But  the  truth  of  it  is,  there  are  wicked  and 
abominable  laws  that  will  be  in  your  power  to  alter.  To 
hang  a  man  for  sixpence,  threepence,  I  know  not  what^ — to 
hang  for  a  trifle  and  pardon  murder,  is  in  the  ministration 
of  the  law  through  the  ill-framing  of  it.  I  have  known  in 
my  experience  abominable  murders  quitted ;  and  to  see  men 
lose  their  lives  for  petty  matters  !  This  is  a  thing  that  God 
will  reckon  for;  and  I  wish  it  may  not  lie  upon  this  nation 
a  day  longer  than  you  have  an  opportunity  to  give  a  remedy; 
and  I  hope  I  shall  cheerfully  join  with  you  in  it." 

Mr.  Hallam  truly  says,  that  though  it  is  impossible  to  rank 
Cromwell  with  Napoleon  as  a  general,  yet  '^his  exploits  were 
as  much  above  the  level  of  lys  contemporaries,  and  more 
the  efi"ects  of  an  original  uneducated  capacity."  Bonaparte 
was  trained  in  the  best  military  schools;  the  army  which 
he  led  to  Italy  was  one  of  the  finest  that  ever  existed.  Crom- 
well passed  his  youth  and  the  prime  of  his  manhood  in  a 
civil  situation.  He  never  looked  on  war  till  he  was  more 
than  forty  years  old.     He  had  first  to  form  himself;  and 


244         maoaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

then  to  form  his  troops.  Out  of  raw  levies  he  created  an 
army,  the  bravest  aud  the  best  disciplined,  the  most  orderly 
in  peace,  and  the  most  terrible  in  war,  that  Europe  had 
seen.  He  called  this  body  into  existence.  He  led  it  to  con- 
quest. He  never  fought  a  battle  without  gaining  a  victory. 
He  never  gained  a  victory  without  annihilating  the  force 
opposed  to  him.  Yet  his  triumphs  were  not  the  highest  glory 
of  his  military  system.  The  respect  which  his  troops  paid 
to  property,  their  attachment  to  the  laws  and  religion  of 
their  country,  their  submission  to  the  civil  power,  their 
temperance,  their  intelligence,  their  industry,  are  without 
parallel.  It  was  after  the  Restoration  that  the  spirit  which 
their  great  leader  had  infused  into  them  was  most  signally 
displayed.  At  the  command  of  the  established  government,  a 
government  which  had  no  means  of  enforcing  obedience, 
lifty  thousand  soldiers,  whose  backs  no  enemy  had  ever  seen, 
either  in  domestic  or  continental  war,  laid  down  their 
arms,  and  retired  into  the  mass  of  the  people ;  thencefor- 
ward to  be  distinguished  only  by  superior  diligence,  sobriety, 
and  regularity  in  the  pursuits  of  peace,  from  the  other 
members  of  the  community  which  they  had  saved. 

In  the  general  spirit  and  character  of  his  administration, 
we  think  Cromwell  far  superior  to  Napoleon.  ''In  civil 
government,'^  says  Mr.  Hallam,  "there  can  be  no  adequate 
parallel  between  one  who  had  sucked  only  the  dregs  of  a 
besotted  fanaticism,  and  one  to  whom  the  stores  of  reason 
and  philosophy  were  open.''  These  expressions,  it  seems  to 
us,  convey  the  highest  eulogium  on  our  great  countryman. 
Reason  and  philosophy  did  not  teach  the  conqueror  of 
Europe  to  command  his  passions,  or  to  pursue,  as  a  first 
object,  the  happiness  of  the  people.  They  did  not  prevent 
him  from  risking  his  fame  and  his  power  in  a  frantic  contest 
against  the  principles  of  human  nature  and  the  laws  of  the 
physical  world,  against  the  rage  of  the  winter  and  the  liberty 
of  the  sea.  They  did  not  exempt  him  from  the  influence 
of  that  most  pernicious  of  superstitions,  a  presumptuous 
fatalism.  They  did  not  preserve  him  from  the  inebriation  of 
prosperity,  or  restrain  him  from  indecent  querulousness  and 
violence  in  adversity.  On  the  other  hand,  the  fanaticism  of 
Cromwell  never  urged  him  on  impracticable  undertakings, 
or  confused  his  perception  of  the  public  good.     Inferior  to 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  1>45 

Bonaparte  in  invention,  he  was  far  superior  to  him  in  wis- 
dom.     The   French    emperor    is    among  conquerors  what 
VoUaire  is  among  writers,  a  miraculous  child.     His  splendid 
genius  was  frequently  clouded  by  fits  of  humour  as  absurdly 
perverse  as  those  of  the  pet  of  the  nursery,  who  quarrels 
with  his  food,  and  dashes  his  playthings  to  pieces.     Crom- 
well was  emphatically  a  man.     He  possessed,  in  an  eminent 
degree,  that  masculine  and  full-grown  robustness  of  mind 
that  equally  diffused  intellectual  health,  which,  if  our  na- 
tional partiality  does  not  mislead  us,  has  peculiarly  charac- 
terized the  great  men  of  England.     Never  was  any  ruler 
so  conspicuously  born  for  sovereignty.     The  cup  which  has 
intoxicated  almost  all  others,  sobered  him.     His  spirit,  rest- 
less from  its  buoyancy  in  a  lower  sphere,  reposed  in  majes- 
tic placidity  as  soon  as  it  had  reached  the  level  congenial  to 
It.     He  had  nothing  in  common  with  that  large  class  of  men 
who    distinguish    themselves    in    lower   posts,  and  whose 
incapacity  becomes    obvious    as    soon  as  the  public  voice 
summons  them  to  take  the  lead.     Eapidly  as  his  fortunes 
grew,  his  mind  expanded  more  rapidly  still.     Insignificant 
as  a  private  citizen,  he  was  a  great  general;  he  was  a  still 
greater  prince.     The  manner  of  Napoleon  was  a  theatrical 
compound,   m    which    the    coarseness  of   a    revolutionary 
guard-room  was    blended  with    the  ceremony  of  the    old 
court  of  Versailles.     Cromwell,  by  the  confession  even  of 
his  enemies,  exhibited  in   his  demeanour  the  simple  and 
natural  nobleness  of  a  man  neither  ashamed  of  his  origin 
nor  vain  of  his  elevation ;   of  a  man  who  had  found  his 
proper  place  in  society,  and  who  felt  secure  that  he  was 
competent  to  fill  it.     Easy,  even  to  familiarity,  where  his 
own  dignity  was  concerned,  he  was  punctilious  only  for  his 
country .^     His  own  character  he  left  to  take  care  of  itself; 
he  left  it  to  be  defended  by  his  victories  in  war,  and  his 
reforms  in  peace.     But  he  was  a  jealous  and  implacable 
guardian  of  the  public  honour.    He  suffered  a  crazy  Quaker 
to  insult  him  in  the  midst  of  Whitehall,  and'revenged  him- 
self only  by  liberating  him  and  giving  him  a  dinner.     But 
he  was  prepared  to  risk  the  chances  of  war  to  aver.ee  the 
blood  of  a  private  Englishman. 

No  sovereign  ever  carried  to  the  throne  so  large  a  portion 
of  the  best  qualities  of  the  middling  orders,  so  strone  a  sym- 


246 

pathy  with  the  feelings  and  interests  of  his  people.  He  was 
sometimes  driven  to  arbitrary  measures ;  but  he  had  a  high, 
stout,  honest,  English  heart.  Hence  it  was  that  he  loved  to 
surround  his  throne  with  such  men  as  Hale  and  Blake. 
Hence  it  was  that  he  allowed  so  large  a  share  of  political 
liberty  to  his  subjects,  and  that,  even  when  an  opposition, 
dangerous  to  his  power  and  to  his  person  almost  compelled 
him  to  govern  by  the  sword,  he  was  still  anxious  to  leave  a 
germ  from  which,  at  a  more  favourable  season,  free  insti- 
tutions might  spring.  We  firmly  believe,  that  if  his  first 
Parliament  had  not  commenced  its  debates  by  disputing  his 
title,  his  government  would  have  been  as  mild  at  home  as 
it  was  energetic  and  able  abroad.  He  was  a  soldier — he 
had  risen  by  war.  Had  his  ambition  been  of  an  impure  or 
selfish  kind,  it  would  have  been  easy  for  him  to  plunge  his 
country  into  continental  hostilities  on  a  large  scale,  and  to 
dazzle  the  restless  factions  which  he  ruled  by  the  splendour 
of  his  victories.  Some  of  his  enemies  have  sneeringly 
remarked,  that  in  the  successes  obtained  under  his  adminis- 
tration, he  had  no  personal  share ;  as  if  a  man  who  had 
raised  himself  from  obscurity  to  empire,  solely  by  his  mili- 
tary talents,  could  have  any  unworthy  reason  for  shrinking 
from  military  enterprise.  This  reproach  is  his  highest 
glory.  In  the  success  of  the  English  navy  he  could  have 
no  selfish  interests.  Its  triumphs  added  nothing  to  his  fame ; 
its  increase  added  nothing  to  his  means  of  overawing  his 
enemies;  its  great  leader  was  not  his  friend.  Yet  he  took 
a  peculiar  pleasure  in  encouraging  that  noble  service,  which, 
of  all  the  instruments  employed  by  an  English  government, 
is  the  most  impotent  for  mischief,  and  the  most  powerful  for 
good.  His  administration  was  glorious,  but  with  no  vulgar 
glory.  It  was  not  one  of  those  periods  of  overstrained  and 
convulsive  exertion  which  necessarily  produce  debility  and 
languor.  Its  energy  was  natural,  healthful,  temperate.  He 
placed  England  at  the  head  of  the  Protestant  interest,  and 
in  the  first  rank  of  Christian  powers.  He  taught  every 
nation  to  value  her  friendship  and  to  dread  her  enmity.  But 
he  did  not  squander  her  resources  in  a  vain  attempt  to  invest 
her  with  that  supremacy  which  no  power,  in  the  modern 
system  of  Europe,  can  safely  affect,  or  can  long  retain. 
This  noble  and  sober  wisdom  had  its  reward.     If  he  did 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  247 

not  carry  the  banners  of  the  Commonwealth  in  triumph  to 
distant  capitals;  if  he  did  not  adorn  Whitehall  with  the 
spoils  of  the  Stadthouse  and  the  Louvre ;  if  he  did  not  por- 
tion out  Flanders  and  Germany  into  principalities  for  his 
kinsmen  and  his  generals ;  he  did  not,  on  the  other  hand, 
see  his  country  overrun  by  the  armies  of  nations  which  his 
ambition  had  provoked.  He  did  not  drag  out  the  last  years 
of  his  life  in  exile  and  a  prisoner,  in  an  unhealthy  climate 
and  under  an  ungenerous  jailer,  raging  with  the  impotent 
desire  of  'vengeance,  and  brooding  over  visions  of  departed 
glory.  He  went  down  to  his  grave  in  the  fulness  of  power 
and  fame,  and  left  to  his  son  an  authority  which  any  man 
of  ordinary  firmness  and  prudence  would  have  retained. 

But  for  the  weakness  of  that  foolish  Ishbosheth,  the 
opinions  which  we  have  been  expressing  would,  we  believe, 
now  have  formed  the  orthodox  creed  of  good  Englishmen. 
We  might  now  be  writing  under  the  government  of  his 
Highness  Oliver  the  Fifth,  or  Richard  the  Fourth,  Protector, 
by  the  Grrace  of  Grod,  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England, 
Scotland,  and  Ireland,  and  the  dominions  thereto  belonging. 
The  form  of  the  great  founder  of  the  dynasty,  on  horseback, 
as  when  he  led  the  charge  at  Naseby,  or  on  foot,  as  when 
he  took  the  mace  from  the  table  of  the  Commons,  would 
adorn  all  our  squares,  and  overlook  our  public  offices  from 
Charing-Cross ;  and  sermons  in  his  praise  would  be  duly 
preached  on  his  lucky  day,  the  third  of  September,  by  court- 
chaplains,  guiltless  of  the  abominations  of  the  surplice. 

But,  though  his  memory  has  not  been  taken  under  the 
patronage  of  any  party,  though  every  device  has  been  used 
to  blacken  it,  though  to  praise  him  would  long  have  been  a 
punishable  crime,  yet  truth  and  merit  at  last  prevail.  Cow- 
ards, who  had  trembled  at  the  very  sound  of  his  name,  tools 
of  office,  who,  like  Downing,  had  been  'proud  of  the  honour 
of  lacqueying  his  coach,  might  insult  him  in  loyal  speeches 
and  addresses.  Venal  poets  might  transfer  to  the  King  the 
same  eulogies,  little  the  worse  for  wear,  which  they  had  be- 
stowed on  the  Protector.  A  fickle  multitude  might  crowd 
to  shout  and  scoff  round  the  gibbeted  remains  of  the  great- 
est Prince  and  Soldier  of  the  age.  But  when  the  Dutch 
cannon  startled  an  effeminate  tyrant  in  his  own  palace^ 
when  the  conquests  which  had  been  made  by  the  armies  of 


248  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Cromwell  were  sold  to  pamper  the  harlots  of  Charles,  whec 
Englishmen  were  sent  to  fight,  under  the  banners  of  France^ 
against  the  independence  of  Europe  and  the  Protestant  re- 
ligion, many  honest  hearts  swelled  in  secret  at  the  thought 
of  one  who  had  never  suffered  his  country  to  be  ill-used  by 
any  but  himself.  It  must  indeed  have  been  difficult  for  any 
Englishman  to  see  the  salaried  Viceroy  of  France,  at  the 
most  important  crisis  of  his  fate,  sauntering  through  his 
harem,  yawning  and  talking  nonsense  over  a  despatch,  or 
beslobbering  his  brothers  and  his  courtiers  in  a  fit  of  maud- 
lin afi'ection,'^  without  a  respectful  and  tender  remembrance 
of  him,  before  whose  genius  the  young  pride  of  Louis  and 
the  veteran  craft  of  Mazarin  had  stood  rebuked ;  who  had 
humbled  Spain  on  the  land  and  Holland  on  the  sea;  and 
whose  imperial  voice  had  arrested  the  victorious  arms  of 
Sweden,  and  the  persecuting  fires  of  Rome.  Even  to  the 
present  day,  his  character,  though  constantly  attacked  and 
scarcely  ever  defended,  is  popular  with  the  great  body  of 
our  countrymen. 

The  most  questionable  act  of  his  life  was  the  execution 
of  Charles.  We  have  already  strongly  condemned  that 
proceeding;  but  we  by  no  means  consider  it  as  one  which 
attaches  any  peculiar  stigma  of  infamy  to  the  names  of  those 
who  participated  in  it.  It  was  an  unjust  and  injudicious 
display  of  violent  party  spirit ;  but  it  was  not  a  cruel  or 
perfidious  measure.  It  had  all  those  features  which  distin- 
guish the  errors  of  magnanimous  and  intrepid  spirits  from 
base  and  malignant  crimes. 

We  cannot  quit  this  interesting  topic,  without  saying  a 
few  words  on  a  transaction  which  Mr.  Hallam  has  made  the 
subject  of  a  severe  accusation  against  Cromwell,  and  which 
has  been  made  by  others  the  subject  of  a  severe  accusation 
against  Mr.  Hallam.'  We  conceive  that  both  the  Protector 
and  the  historian  may  be  vindicated.  Mr.  Hallam  tells  us 
that  Cromwell  sold  fifty  English  gentlemen  as  slaves  in 
Barbadoes.  For  making  this  statement,  he  has  been  charged 
with  two  high  literary  crimes.  The  first  accusation  is,  that, 
from  his  violent  prejudice  against  Oliver,  he  has  calumniated 

*  These  particulars,  and  many  more  of  the  same  kind,  are  re- 
corded by  Pepys. 


hallam's  constitutional  His:roRY.  249 

him  falsely.     The  second,  preferred  by  the  same  accuser 
is,  that  from  his  violent  fondness  for  the  same  Oliver,  he  has 
hidden  his  calumnies  against  him  at  the  fag  end  of  a  note 
instead  of  putting  them  into  the  text.     Both  these  imputa- 
tions cannot  possibly  be  true,  and  it  happens  that  neither 
is  so.  :^  His  censors  will  find,  when  they  take  the  trouble  to 
read  his  book,  that  the  story  is  mentioned  in  the  text  as  well 
as  in  the  notes;  and  they  will  also  find,  when  they  take  the 
trouble  to  read  some  other  books,  with  which  speculators  on 
English  history  ought  to  be  acquainted,  that  the  story  is 
true.     If  there  could  have  been  any  doubt  about  the  matter, 
Burton's  Diary  must  have  set  it  at  rest.     But,  in  truth 
there  was  abundant  and  superabundant  evidence,  before  the 
appearance  of  that  valuable  publication.     Not  to  mention 
the  authority  to  which  Mr.  Hallam  refers,  and  which  alone 
is  perfectly  satisfactory,  there  is  Slingsby  Bethel's  account 
of  the  proceedings  of  Bichard  Cromwell's  parliament,  pub- 
lished immediately  after  its  dissolution.    He  was  a  member  • 
he  must  therefore  have  known  what  happened ;  and  violent 
as  his  prejudices  were,  he  never  could  have  been  such  an 
idiot  as  to  state  positive  falsehoods  with  respect  to  public 
transactions  which  had  taken  place  only  a  few  days  before. 
It  will  not  be  quite  so  easy  to  defend  Cromwell  against  Mr. 
Hallam,  as  to  defend  Mr.  Hallam  against  those  who  attack 
his  history.     But  the  story  is  certainly  by  no  means  so  bad 
as  he  takes  it  to  be.     In  the  first  place,  this  slavery  was 
merely  the  compulsory  labour  to  which  every  transported 
convict  is  liable.     Nobody  acquainted  with  the  language  of 
the  last  century,  can  be  ignorant  that  such  convicts  were 
generally  termed  slaves;   until  discussions  about  another 
species  of  slavery,  far  more  miserable  and  altogether  unme- 
rited, rendered  the  word  too  odious  to  be  applied  even  to 
felons  of  English  origin.     These  persons  enjoyed  the  pro- 
tection of  the  law  during  the  term  of  their  service,  which 
was  only  five  years.     The  punishment  of  transportation  has 
been  inflicted  by  almost  every  government  that  England  has 
ever  had,  for  political  ofi'ences.     After  Monmouth's  insur- 
rection, and  after  the  rebellions  in  1715  and  1745,  great 
numbers  of  the  prisoners  were  sent  to  America.      These 
considerations  ought,  we  think,  to  free  Cromwell  from  the 
imputation  of  having  inflicted  on  his  enemies  any  punish- 


250        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

ment  wliicli  in  itself  is  of  a  shocking  and  atrocious  cha- 
racter. 

To  transport  fifty  men,  however,  without  a  trial,  is  bad 
enough.  But  let  us  consider,  in  the  first  place,  that  some 
of  these  men  were  taken  in  arms  against  the  government, 
and  that  it  is  not  clear  that  they  were  not  all  so  taken.  In 
that  case,  Cromwell  or  his  officers  might,  according  to  the 
usages  of  those  unhappy  times,  have  put  them  to  the  sword, 
or  turned  them  over  to  the  provost-marshal  at  once.  This, 
we  allow,  is  not  a  complete  vindication ;  for  execution  by 
martial  law  ought  never  to  take  place  but  under  circum- 
stances which  admit  of  no  delay;  and  if  there  is  time  to 
transport  men,  there  is  time  to  try  them. 

The  defenders  of  the  measure  stated  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  that  the  persons  thus  transported  not  only  con- 
sented to  go,  but  went  with  remarkable  cheerfulness.  By 
this,  we  suppose  it  is  to  be  understood,  not  that  they  had 
any  very  violent  desire  to  be  bound  apprentices  in  Barba- 
does,  but  that  they  considered  themselves  as,  on  the  whole, 
fortunately  and  leniently  treated,  in  the  situation  in  which 
they  had  placed  themselves. 

When  these  considerations  are  fairly  estimated,  it  must, 
we  think,  be  allowed  that  this  selling  into  slavery  was  not, 
as  it  seems  at  first  sight,  a  barbarous  outrage,  unprecedented 
in  our  annals,  but  merely  a  very  arbitrary  proceeding,  which, 
like  most  of  the  arbitrary  proceedings  of  Cromwell,  was  rather 
a  violation  of  positive  law  than  of  any  great  principle  of 
justice  and  mercy.  When  Mr.  Hallam  declares  it  to  have 
been  more  oppressive  than  any  of  the  measures  of  Charles 
the  Second,  he  forgets,  we  imagine,  that  under  the  reign  of 
that  prince,  and  during  the  administration  of  Lord  Claren- 
don, many  of  the  Roundheads  were,  without  any  trial,  impri- 
soned at  a  distance  from  England,  merely  in  order  to  remove 
them  beyond  the  reach  of  the  great  liberating  writ  of  our 
law.  But,  in  fact,  it  is  not  fair  to  compare  the  cases.  The 
government  of  Charles  was  perfectly  secure.  The  "  res  dura 
et  regni  iiovitas"  is  the  great  apology  of  Cromwell. 

From  the  moment  that  Cromwell  is  dead  and  buried,  we 
go  on  in  almost  perfect  harmony  with  Mr.  Hallam  to  the 
end  of  his  book.  The  times  which  followed  the  Restoration 
peculiarly  require  that  unsparing  impartiality  which  is  his 


HALLAM^S  CONSTITUTIONAL  HISTORY.  251 

most  distinguishing  virtue.  No  part  of  our  history  during 
the  last  three  centuries  presents  a  spectacle  of  such  general 
dreariness.  The  whole  breed  of  our  statesmen  seem  to 
have  degenerated ;  and  their  moral  and  intellectual  littleness 
strikes  us  with  the  more  disgust,  because  we  see  it  placed  in 
immediate  contrast  with  the  high  and  majestic  qualities  of 
the  race  which  they  succeeded.  In  the  great  civil  war,  even 
the  bad  cause  had  been  rendered  respectable  and  amiable, 
by  the  purity  and  elevation  of  mind  which  many  of  its  friends 
displayed.  Under  Charles  the  Second,  the  best  and  noblest 
of  ends  was  disgraced  by  means  the  most  cruel  and  sordid. 
The  rage  of  faction  succeeded  to  the  love  of  liberty;  loyalty 
died  away  into  servility.  We  look  in  vain  among  the  lead- 
ing politicians  of  either  side  for  steadiness  of  principle,  or 
even  for  that  vulgar  fidelity  to  party  which  in  our  time  it  is 
esteemed  infamous  to  violate.  The  inconsistency,  perfidy, 
and  baseness,  which  the  leaders  constantly  practised,  which 
their  followers  defended,  and  which  the  great  body  of  the 
people  regarded,  as  it  seems,  with  little  disapprobation, 
appear  in  the  present  age  almost  incredible.  In  the  age  of 
Charles  the  First,  they  would,  we  believe,  have  excited  as 
much  astonishment. 

Man,  however,  is  always  the  same  j  and  when  so  marked 
a  difference  appears  between  two  generations,  it  is  certain 
that  the  solution  may  be  found  in  their  respective  circum- 
stances. The  principal  statesmG>n  of  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second  were  trained  during  the  civil  war,  and  the  revo- 
lutions which  followed  it.  Such  a  period  is  eminently  fa- 
vourable to  the  growth  of  quick  and  active  talents.  It  forms 
a  class  of  men,  shrewd,  vigilant,  inventive,  of  men  whose 
dexterity  triumphs  over  the  most  perplexing  combinations 
of  circumstances,  whose  presaging  instinct,  no  sign  of  the 
times,  no  incipient  change  of  public  feelings,  can  elude. 
But  it  is  an  unpropitious  season  for  the  firm  and  masculine 
virtues.  The  statesman  who  enters  on  his  career  at  such  a 
time,  can  form  no  permanent  connections — can  make  no 
accurate  observations  on  the  higher  parts  of  political  science. 
Before  he  can  attach  himself  to  a  party,  it  is  scattered  j 
before  he  can  study  the  nature  of  a  government,  it  is  over- 
turned. The  oath  of  abjuration  comes  close  on  the  oath  of 
allegiance.     The  association  which  was  subscribed  jester- 


252         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

day,  is  burned  by  the  hangman  to-day.  In  the  midst  of 
the  constant  eddy  and  change,  self-preservation  becomes  the 
first  object  of  the  adventurer.  It  is  a  task  too  hard  for  the 
strongest  head,  to  keep  itself  from  becoming  giddy  in  the 
eternal  whirl.  Public  spirit  is  out  of  the  question ;  a  laxity 
of  principle,  without  which  no  public  man  can  be  eminent, 
or  even  safe,  becomes  too  common  to  be  scandalous;  and  the 
whole  nation  looks  coolly  on  instances  of  apostasy,  which 
would  startle  the  foulest  turncoat  of  more  settled  times. 

The  history  of  France  since  the  revolution  affords  some 
striking  illustrations  of  these  remarks.  The  same  man  was 
minister  of  the  republic,  of  Bonaparte,  of  Louis  the  Eigh- 
teenth, of  Bonaparte  again  after  his  return  from  Elba,  of 
Louis  again  after  his  return  from  Ghent;  yet  all  these 
manifold  treasons  by  no  means  seemed  to  destroy  his  in- 
fluence, or  even  to  fix  any  peculiar  stain  of  infamy  on  his 
character.  "We,  to  be  sure,  did  not  know  what  to  make  of 
him ;  but  his  countrymen  did  not  seem  to  be  shocked ;  and 
in  truth,  they  had  little  right  to  be  shocked :  for  there  was 
scarcely  one  Frenchman  distinguished  in  the  state  or  in  the 
army,  who  had  not,  according  to  the  best  of  his  talents  and 
opportunities,  emulated  the  example.  It  was  natural,  too, 
that  this  should  be  the  case.  The  rapidity  and  violence 
with  which  change  followed  change  in  the  affairs  of  France 
towards  the  close  of  the  last  century,  had  taken  away  the 
reproach  of  inconsistency,  unfixed  the  principles  of  public 
men,  and  produced  in  many  minds  a  general  skepticism  and 
indifference  about  principles  of  government. 

No  Englishman  who  has  studied  attentively  the  reign  of 
Charles  the  Second,  will  think  himself  entitled  to  indulge 
in  any  feelings  of  national  superiority  over  the  Dictionnaire 
de$  Girouettes.  Shaftesbury  was  surely  a  far  less  respect- 
able man  than  Talleyrand;  and  it  would  be  injustice  even  to 
Fouche,  to  compare  him  with  Lauderdale.  Nothing,  indeed, 
can  more  clearly  show  how  low  the  standard  of  political 
morality  had  fallen  in  this  country,  than  the  fortunes  of  the 
men  whom  we  have  named.  The  government  wanted  a 
ruflSian  to  carry  on  the  most  atrocious  system  of  misgovern- 
ment  with  which  any  nation  was  ever  cursed — to  extirpate 
Presbyterianism  by  fire  and  sword,  the  drowning  of  women, 
and  the  frightful  torture  of  the  boot ;  and  they  found  him 


HALLAM'S    CONSTITUTIONAL    HISTORY.  253 

among  the  chiefs  of  the  rebellion  and  the  subscribers  of  the 
Covenant !  The  opposition  looked  for  a  chief  to  head  them 
in  the  most  desperate  attacks  ever  made,  under  the  forms  of 
the  constitution,  on  any  English  administration ;  and  they 
selected  the  minister  who  had  the  deepest  share  in  the  worst 
parts  of  that  administration — the  soul  of  the  cabal — the 
counsellor  who  had  shut  up  the  Exchequer,  and  urged  on 
the  Dutch  war.  The  whole  political  drama  was  of  the  same 
cast.  No  unity  of  plan,  no  decent  propriety  of  character 
and  costume,  could  be  found  in  the  wild  and  monstrous  har 
lequinade.  The  whole  was  made  up  of  extravagant  trans- 
formations and  burlesque  contrasts ;  Atheists  turned  Puri 
tans ;  Puritans  turned  Atheists ;  republicans  defending  the 
divine  right  of  kings;  prostitute  courtiers  clamouring  for  the 
liberties  of  the  people;  judges  inflaming  the  rage  of  mobs; 
patriots  pocketing  bribes  from  foreign  powers ;  a  popish 
prince  torturing  Presbyterians  into  Episcopacy  in  one  part 
of  the  island ;  Presbyterians  cutting  off  the  heads  of  popish 
noblemen  and  gentlemen  in  the  other.  Public  opinion  has 
its  natural  flux  and  reflux.  After  a  violent  burst,  there  is 
commonly  a  reaction.  But  vicissitudes  as  extraordinary  as 
those  which  marked  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second,  can 
only  be  explained  by  supposing  an  utter  want  of  principle 
in  the  political  world.  On  neither  side  was  there  fidelity 
enough  to  face  a  reverse.  Those  honourable  retreats  from 
power,  which,  in  later  days,  parties  have  often  made,  with 
loss,  but  still  in  good  order,  in  firm  union,  with  unbroken 
spirit  and  formidable  means  of  annoyance,  were  utterly  un- 
known. As  soon  as  a  check  took  place,  a  total  rout  fol- 
lowed ;  arms  and  colours  were  thrown  away.  The  van- 
quished troops,  like  the  Italian  mercenaries  of  the  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries,  enlisted,  on  the  very  field  of  battle, 
in  the  service  of  the  conquerors.  In  a  nation  proud  of  its 
sturdy  justice  and  plain  good  sense,  no  party  could  be  found 
to  take  a  firm  middle  stand  between  the  worst  of  oppositions 
and  the  worst  of  courts.  When,  on  charges  as  wild  as 
Mother  G-oose's  tales,  on  the  testimony  of  wretches  who 
proclaimed  themselves  to  be  spies  and  traitors,  and  whom 
everybody  now  believes  to  have  been  also  liars  and  mur- 
derers, the  offal  of  jails  and  brothels,  the  leavings  of  the 
hangman's  whip  and  shears,  Catholics  guilty  of  nothing  but 
Vol.  I.— 22 


254        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

their  religion  were  led  like  sheep  to  the  Protestant  sham- 
bles, where  were  the  loyal  Tory  gentry  and  the  passively 
obedient  clergy  ?  And  where,  when  the  time  of  retribution 
came,  when  laws  were  strained  and  juries  packed  to  de- 
stroy the  leaders  of  the  Whigs,  when  charters  were  in- 
vaded, when  Jeffries  and  Kirke  were  making  Somerset- 
shire what  Lauderdale  and  Graham  had  made  Scotland, 
where  were  the  ten  thousand  brisk  boys  of  Shaftesbury, 
the  members  of  ignoramus  juries,  the  wearers  of  the  Polish 
medal  ?  All  powerful  to  destroy  others,  unable  to  save 
themselves,  the  members  of  the  two  parties  oppressed  and 
were  oppressed,  murdered  and  were  murdered,  in  their 
turn.  No  lucid  interval  occurred  between  the  frantic  pa- 
roxysms of  two  contradictory  illusions. 

To  the  frequent  changes  of  the  government  during  the 
twenty  years  which  had  preceded  the  Revolution,  this  un- 
steadiness is  in  a  great  measure  to  be  attributed.  Other 
causes  had  also  been  at  work.  Even  if  the  country  had 
been  governed  by  the  house  of  Cromwell,  or  the  remains  of 
the  Long  Parliament,  the  extreme  austerity  of  the  Puritans 
would  necessarily  have  produced  a  revulsion.  Towards  the 
close  of  the  Protectorate,  many  signs  indicated  that  a  time 
of  license  was  at  hand.  But  the  restoration  of  Charles  the 
Second  rendered  the  change  wonderfully  rapid  and  violent. 
Profligacy  became  a  test  of  orthodoxy  and  loyalty,  a  qualifi- 
cation for  rank  and  office.  A  deep  and  general  taint  in- 
fected the  morals  of  the  most  influential  classes,  and  spread 
itself  through  every  province  of  letters.  Poetry  inflamed 
the  passions ;  philosophy  undermined  the  principles;  divinity 
itself,  inculcating  an  abject  reverence  for  the  court,  gave 
additional  effect  to  its  licentious  example.  We  look  in  vain 
for  those  qualities  which  give  a  charm  to  the  errors  of  high 
and  ardent  natures,  for  the  generosity,  the  tenderness,  the 
chivalrous  delicacy,  which  ennoble  appetites  into  passions, 
and  impart  to  vice  itself  a  portion  of  the  majesty  of  virtue. 
The  excesses  of  the  age  remind  us  of  the  humours  of  a  gang 
of  footpads,  revelling  with  their  favourite  beauties  at  a  flash- 
house.  In  the  fashionable  libertinism  there  is  a  hard,  cold 
ferocity,  an  impudence,  a  lowness,  a  dirtiness,  which  can  be 
paralleled  only  among  the  heroes  and  heroines  of  that  filthy 
and  heartless  literature  which  encouraged  it.     One  noble- 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  255 

man  of  great  abilities  wanders  about  as  a  Merry- Andrew. 
Another  harangues  the  mob  stark-naked  from  a  window.  A 
third  lays  an  ambush  to  cudgel  a  man  who  has  offended  him. 
A  knot  of  gentlemen  of  high  rank  and  influence  combine  to 
push  their  fortunes  at  court,  by  circulating  stories  intended 
to  ruin  an  innocent  girl,  stories  which  had  no  foundation, 
and  which,  if  they  had  been  true,  would  never  have  passed 
the  lips  of  a  man  of  honour.*  A  dead  child  is  found  in  the 
palace,  the  offspring  of  some  maid  of  honour,  by  some  cour- 
tier, or  perhaps  by  Charles  himself  The  whole  flight  of 
panders  and  buffoons  pounce  upon  it,  and  carry  it  in  triumph 
to  the  royal  laboratory,  where  his  Majesty,  after  a  brutal 
jest,  dissects  it  for  the  amusement  of  the  assembly,  and  pro- 
bably of  its  father  among  the  rest !  The  favourite  duchess 
stamps  about  Whitehall  cursing  and  swearing.  The  minis- 
ters employ  their  time  at  the  council-board  in  making  mouths 
at  each  other,  and  taking  off  each  other's  gestures  for  the 
amusement  of  the  king.  The  peers  at  a  conference  begin 
to  pommel  each  other,  and  to  tear  collars  and  periwigs.  A 
speaker  in  the  House  of  Commons  gives  offence  to  the  court. 
He  is  waylaid  by  a  gang  of  bullies,  and  his  nose  is  cut  to 
the  bone.  This  ignominious  dissoluteness,  or  rather,  if  we 
may  venture  to  designate  it  by  the  only  proper  word,  black- 
guardism of  feelings  and  manners,  could  not  but  spread  from 
private  to  public  life.  The  cynical  sneers,  the  epicurean 
sophistry,  which  had  driven  honour  and  virtue  from  one  part 
of  the  character,  extended  their  influence  over  every  other. 
The  second  generation  of  the  statesmen  of  this  reign,  were 
worthy  pupils  of  the  schools  in  which  they  had  been  trained, 
of  the  gaming-table  of  Grammont,  and  the  tiring-room  of 
Nell.  In  no  other  age  could  such  a  trifler  as  Buckingham 
have  exercised  any  political  influence.  In  no  other  age 
could  the  path  to  power  and  glory  have  been  thrown  open 
to  the  manifold  infamies  of  Churchill. 

The  history  of  that  celebrated  man  shows,  more  clearly 
perhaps  than  that  of  any  other  individual,  the  malignity  and 
extent  of  the  corruption  which  had  eaten  into  the  heart  of 

-  The  manner  in  which  Hamilton  relates  the  circumstances  of 
the  atrocious  plot  against  poor  Ann  Hyde  is,  if  possible,  more  dis- 
graceful to  the  court,  of  which  he  may  be  considered  as  a  speci- 
men, than  the  plot  itself. 


256         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

the  public  morality.  An  English  gentleman  of  family 
attaches  himself  to  a  prince  who  has  seduced  his  sister,  and 
accepts  rank  and  wealth  as  the  price  of  her  shame  and  his 
own.  He  then  repays  by  ingratitude  the  benefits  which 
he  has  purchased  by  ignominy,  betrays  his  patron  in  a 
manner  which  the  best  cause  cannot  excuse,  and  commits 
an  act,  not  only  of  private  treachery,  but  of  distinct  military 
desertion.  To  his  conduct  at  the  crisis  of  the  fate  of  James, 
no  service  in  modern  times  has,  as  far  as  we  remember, 
furnished  any  parallel.  The  conduct  of  Ney,  scandalous 
enough  no  doubt,  is  the  very  fastidiousness  of  honour  in 
comparison  to  it.  The  perfidy  of  Arnold  approaches  it  most 
nearly.  In  our  age  and  country,  no  talents,  no  services,  no 
party  attachments  could  bear  any  man  up  under  such  moun- 
tains of  infamy.  Yet,  even  before  Churchill  had  performed 
those  great  actions,  which  in  some  degree  redeem  his  cha- 
racter with  posterity,  the  load  lay  very  lightly  on  him.  He 
had  others  in  abundance  to  keep  him  countenance.  Go- 
dolphin,  Oxford,  Danby,  the  trimmer  Halifax,  the  renegade 
Sunderland,  were  all  men  of  the  same  class. 

Where  such  was  the  political  morality  of  the  noble  and 
the  wealthy,  it  may  easily  be  conceived  that  those  pro- 
fessions which,  even  in  the  best  times,  are  peculiarly  liable 
to  corruption,  were  in  a  frightful  state.  Such  a  bench  and 
such  a  bar  England  has  never  seen.  Jones,  Scroggs,  Jef- 
fries, North,  Wright,  Sawyer,  Williams,  Shower,  are  to 
this  day  the  spots  and  blemishes  of  our  legal  chronicles. 
Differing  in  constitution  and  in  situation,  whether  blustering 
or  cringing,  whether  persecuting  Protestants  or  Catholics, 
they  were  equally  unprincipled  and  inhuman.  The  part 
which  the  Church  played  was  not  equally  atrocious ;  but 
it  must  have  been  exquisitely  diverting  to  a  scoffer.  Never 
were  principles  so  loudly  professed,  and  so  flagrantly  aban- 
doned. The  royal  prerogative  had  been  magnified  to  the 
skies  in  theological  works ;  the  doctrine  of  passive  obedience 
had  been  preached  from  innumerable  pulpits.  The  Univer- 
sity of  Oxford  had  sentenced  the  works  of  the  most  mode- 
rate constitutionalists  to  the  flames.  The  accession  of  a 
Catholic  King,  the  frightful  cruelties  committed  in  the  west 
of  England,  never  shook  the  steady  loyalty  of  the  clergy. 
But  did  they  serve  the  King  for  naught  ?  He  laid  his  hand 


HALLAM's   CO^STITUTIONAL   HISTORY.  257 

on  them,  and  they  cursed  him  to  his  face.  He  touched  the 
revenue  of  a  college  and  the  liberty  of  some  prelates,  and 
the  whole  profession  set  up  a  yell  worthy  of  Hugh  Peters 
himself.  Oxford  sent  its  plate  to  an  invader  with  more  ala- 
crity than  she  had  shown  when  Charles  the  First  requested  it. 
Nothing  was  said  about  the  wickedness  of  resistance  till 
resistance  had  done  its  work,  till  the  anointed  vicegerent  of 
heaven  had  been  driven  away,  and  it  had  become  plain  that 
he  would  never  be  restored,  or  would  be  restored  at  least 
under  strict  limitations.  The  clergy  went  back,  it  must  be 
owned,  to  their  old  theory,  as  soon  as  they  found  that  it 
would  do  them  no  harm. 

To  the  general  baseness  and  profligacy  of  the  times, 
Clarendon  is  principally  indebted  for  his  high  reputation. 
He  was,  in  every  respect,  a  man  unfit  for  his  age,  at  once 
too  good  for  it  and  too  bad  for  it.  He  seemed  to  be  one  of 
the  statesmen  of  Elizabeth,  transplanted  at  once  to  a  state 
of  society  widely  difierent  from  that  in  which  the  abilities 
of  such  statesmen  had  been  serviceable.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  the  royal  prerogative  had  scarcely  been  called  in 
question.  A  minister  who  held  it  high  was  in  no  danger,  so 
long  as  he  used  it  well.  The  attachment  to  the  crown,  that 
extreme  jealousy  of  popular  encroachments,  that  love,  half 
religious,  half  political,  for  the  church,  which,  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Long  Parliament,  showed  itself  in  Clarendon, 
and  which  his  sufferings,  his  long  residence  in  France,  and 
his  high  station  in  the  government,  served  to  strengthen, 
would,  a  hundred  years  earlier,  have  secured  to  him  the 
favour  of  his  sovereign  without  rendering  him.  odious  to  the 
people.  His  probity,  his  correctness  in  private  life,  his 
decency  of  deportment,  and  his  general  ability,  would  not 
have  misbecome  a  colleague  of  Walsingham  and  Burleigh. 
But  in  the  times  on  which  he  was  cast,  his  errors  and  his 
virtues  were  alike  out  of  place.  He  imprisoned  men  with- 
out trial.  He  was  accused  of  raising  unlawful  contributions 
on  the  people  for  the  support  of  the  army.  The  abolition 
of  the  Triennial  Act  was  one  of  his  favourite  objects.  He 
seems  to  have  meditated  the  revival  of  the  Star-Chamber 
and  the  High  Commission  Court.  His  zeal  for  the  preroga- 
tive made  him  unpopular ;  but  it  could  not  secure  to  him 
the  favour  of  a  master  far  more  desirous  of  ease  and  pleasuro 
22* 


258         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

than  of  power.  Charles  would  rather  have  lived  in  exile 
and  privacy,  with  abundance  of  money,  a  crowd  of  mimics 
to  amuse  him,  and  a  score  of  mistresses,  than  have  purchased 
the  absolute  dominion  of  the  world  by  the  privations  and 
exertions  to  which  Clarendon  was  constantly  urging  him. 
A  councillor  who  was  always  bringing  him  papers  and  giv- 
ing him  advice,  and  who  stoutly  refused  to  compliment  Lady 
Castlemaine,  and  to  carry  messages  to  Miss  Stewart,  soon 
became  more  hateful  to  him  than  ever  Cromwell  had  been. 
Thus  considered  by  the  people  as  an  oppressor,  by  the  court 
as  a  censor,  the  minister  fell  from  his  high  office,  with  a 
ruin  more  violent  and  destructive  than  could  ever  have  been 
his  fate,  if  he  had  either  respected  the  principles  of  the  con- 
stitution, or  flattered  the  vices  of  the  King. 

Mr.  Hallam  has  formed,  we  think,  a  most  correct  esti- 
mate of  the  character  and  administration  of  Clarendon.  But 
he  scarcely  makes  sufficient  allowance  for  the  wear  and 
tear  which  honesty  almost  necessarily  sustains  in  the  fric- 
tion of  political  life,  and  which,  in  times  so  rough  as  those 
through  which  Clarendon  passed,  must  be  very  considerable. 
"When  these  are  fairly  estimated,  we  think  that  his  integrity 
may  be  allowed  to  pass  muster.  A  highminded  man  he 
certainly  was  not,  either  in  public  or  in  private  afl"airs. 
His  own  account  of  his  conduct  in  the  affair  of  his  daugh- 
ter is  the  most  extraordinary  passage  in  autobiography. 
We  except  nothing  even  in  the  Confessions  of  Eousscau. 
Several  writers  have  taken  a  perverted  and  absurd  pride  in 
representing  themselves  as  detestable;  but  no  other  ever 
laboured  hard  to  make  himself  despicable  and  ridiculous. 
In  one  important  particular.  Clarendon  showed  as  little  re- 
gard to  the  honour  of  his  country,  as  he  had  shown  to  that  of 
his  family.  He  accepted  a  subsidy  from  France  for  the  re- 
lief of  Portugal.  But  this  method  of  obtaining  money  was 
afterwards  practised  to  a  much  greater  extent,  and  for  ob- 
jects much  less  respectable,  both  by  the  Court  and  by  the 
Opposition. 

These  pecuniary  transactions  are  commonly  considered  as 
the  most  disgraceful  part  of  the  history  of  those  times ;  and 
they  were  no  doubt  highly  reprehensible.  Yet,  in  justice  to 
the  Whigs,  and  to  Charles  himself,  we  must  admit  that  they 
were  not  so  shameful  or  atrocious,  as  at  the  present  day  thej? 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  259 

appear.  The  effect  of  violent  animosities  between  parties 
has  always  been  an  indifference  to  the  general  welfare  and 
honour  of  the  state.  A  politician,  where  factions  run  high,  is 
interestei,  not  for  the  whole  people,  but  for  his  own  section 
of  it.  The  rest  are,  in  his  view,  strangers,  enemies,  or  rather 
pirates.  The  strongest  aversion  which  he  can  feel  to  any 
foreign  power  is  the  ardour  of  friendship,  compared  with  the 
loathing  which  he  entertains  towards  those  domestic  foes 
with  whom  he  is  cooped  up  in  a  narrow  space,  with  whom 
he  lives  in  a  constant  interchange  of  petty  injuries  and  insults, 
and  from  whom,  in  the  day  of  their  success,  he  has  to  expect 
severities  far  beyond  any  that  a  conqueror  from  a  distant 
country  would  inflict.  Thus,  in  Greece,  it  was  a  point  of 
honour  for  a  man  to  leave  his  country  and  cleave  to  his  party. 
No  aristocratical  citizen  of  Samos  or  Corcyra  would  have 
hesitated  to  call  in  the  aid  of  Lacedsemon.  The  multitude, 
on  the  contrary,  looked  to  Athens.  In  the  Italian  states  of 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  from  the  same  cause, 
no  man  was  so  much  a  Florentine  or  a  Pisan,  as  a  Ghibeline 
or  a  Gruelf.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  there  was  a  single 
individual  who  would  have  scrupled  to  raise  his  party  from 
a  state  of  depression,  by  opening  the  gates  of  his  native  city 
to  a  French  or  an  Arragonese  force.  The  Reformation, 
dividing  almost  every  European  country  into  two  parts,  pro- 
duced similar  effects.  The  Catholic  was  too  strong  for  the 
Englishman  :  the  Huguenot  for  the  Frenchman.  The  Pro- 
testant statesmen  of  Scotland  and  France  accordingly  called 
in  the  aid  of  Elizabeth  -,  and  the  Papists  of  the  League  brought 
a  Spanish  army  into  the  very  heart  of  France.  The  commo- 
tions to  which  the  French  Revolution  gave  rise  have  been 
followed  by  the  same  consequences.  The  republicans  in 
every  part  of  Europe  were  eager  to  see  the  armies  of  the 
National  Convention  and  the  Directory  appear  among  them; 
and  exulted  in  defeats  which  distressed  and  humbled  those 
whom  they  considered  as  their  worst  enemies,  their  own 
rulers.  The  princes  and  nobles  of  France,  on  the  other  hand, 
did  their  utmost  to  bring  foreign  invaders  to  Paris.  A  very 
short  time  has  elapsed  since  the  Apostolical  party  in  Spain 
invoked,  too  successfully,  the  support  of  strangers. 

The  great  contest,  which  raged  in  England  during  the 
seventeenth  century  and  the  earlier  part  of  the  eighteenth, 


260        macaulay's  miscellaneous  wbitings. 

extinguished,  not  indeed  in  the  body  of  the  people,  but  in 
those  classes  which  were  most  actively  engaged  in  politics, 
almost  all  national  feelings.  Charles  the  Second,  and  many 
of  his  courtiers,  had  passed  a  large  part  of  their  lives  in 
banishment,  serving  in  foreign  armies,  living  on  the  bounty 
of  foreign  treasuries,  soliciting  foreign  aid  to  re-establish 
monarchy  in  their  native  country.  The  oppressed  Cavaliers 
in  England  constantly  looked  to  France  and  Spain  for  deli- 
verance and  revenge.  Clarendon  censures  the  Coutincntal 
governments  with  great  bitterness  for  not  interfering  in  our 
internal  dissensions.  During  the  protectorate,  not  only  the 
royalists,  but  the  disaffected  of  all  parties,  appear  to  have 
been  desirous  of  assistance  from  abroad.  It  is  not  strange, 
therefore,  that  amidst  the  furious  contests  which  followed 
the  Restoration,  the  violence  of  party  feeling  should  produce 
effects  which  would  probably  have  attended  it  even  in  an 
age  less  distinguished  by  laxity  of  principle  and  indelicacy 
of  sentiment.  It  was  not  till  a  natural  death  had  terminated 
the  paralytic  old  age  of  the  Jacobite  party,  that  the  evil  was 
completely  at  an  end.  The  Whigs  looked  to  Holland;  the 
High  Tories  to  France.  The  former  concluded  the  Barrier 
Treaty;  some  of  the  latter  entreated  the  court  of  Ver- 
sailles to  send  an  expedition  to  England.  Many  men  who, 
however  erroneous  their  political  notions  might  be,  were 
unquestionably  honourable  in  private  life,  accepted  money 
without  scruple  from  the  foreign  powers  favourable  to  the 
Pretender. 

Never  was  there  less  of  national  feeling  among  the  higher 
orders  than  during  the  reign  of  Charles  the  Second.  That 
prince,  on  the  one  side,  thought  it  better  to  be  the  deputy  of 
an  absolute  king,  than  the  king  of  a  free  people.  Algernon 
Sidney,  on  the  other  hand,  would  gladly  have  aided  France 
in  all  her  ambitious  schemes,  and  have  seen  England  re- 
duced to  the  condition  of  a  province,  in  the  wild  hope  that 
a  foreign  despot  would  assist  him  to  establish  his  darling 
republic.  The  king  took  the  money  of  France  to  assist 
him  in  the  enterprise  which  he  meditated  against  the  liberty 
of  his  subjects,  with  as  little  scruple  as  Frederic  of  Prussia 
or  Alexander  of  Russia  accepted  our  subsidies  in  a  time  of 
war.  The  leaders  of  the  Opposition  no  more  thought  them- 
selves disgraced  by  the  presents  of  Louis,  than  a  gentleman 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  261 

of  our  own  time  thinks  himself  disgraced  by  the  liberality 
of  a  powerful  and  wealthy  member  of  his  party  who  pays 
his  election  bill.  The  money  which  the  king  received  from 
France  had  been  largely  employed  to  corrupt  members  of 
Parliament.  The  enemies  of  the  court  might  think  it  fair, 
or  even  absolutely  necessary,  to  encounter  bribery  with 
bribery.  Thus  they  took  the  French  gratuities,  the  needy 
among  them  for  their  own  use,  the  rich  probably  for  the 
general  purposes  of  the  party,  without  any  scruple.  If  we 
compare  their  conduct,  not  with  that  of  English  statesmen 
in  our  own  time,  but  with  that  of  persons  in  those  foreign 
countries  which  are  now  situated  as  England  then  was,  we 
shall  probably  see  reason  to  abate  something  of  the  severity 
of  censure  with  which  it  has  been  the  fashion  to  visit  those 
proceedings.  Yet,  when  every  allowance  is  made,  the 
transaction  is  sufficiently  oiFensive.  It  is  satisfactory  to 
find  that  Lord  Russel  stands  free  from  any  imputation  of 
personal  participation  in  the  spoil.  An  age,  so  miserably 
poor  in  all  the  moral  qualities  which  render  public  characters 
respectable,  can  ill  spare  the  credit  which  it  derives  from  a 
man,  not  indeed  conspicuous  for  talents  or  knowledge,  but 
honest  even  in  his  errors,  respectable  in  every  relation  of 
life,  rationally  pious,  steadily  and  placidly  brave. 

The  great  improvement  which  took  place  in  our  breed  of 
public  men  is  principally  to  be  ascribed  to  the  Revolution. 
Yet  that  memorable  event,  in  a  great  measure,  took  its  cha- 
racter from  the  very  vices  which  it  was  the  means  of  reform- 
ing. It  was,  assuredly,  a  happy  revolution,  and  a  useful 
revolution ;  but  it  was  not,  what  it  has  often  been  called,  a 
glorious  revolution.  William,  and  William  alone,  derived 
glory  from  it.  The  transaction  was,  in  almost  every  part, 
discreditable  to  England.  That  a  tyrant,  who  had  violated 
the  fundamental  laws  of  the  country,  who  had  attacked  the 
rights  of  its  greatest  corporations,  who  had  begun  to  per- 
secute the  established  religion  of  the  state,  who  had  never 
respected  the  law  either  in  his  superstition  or  in  his  revenge, 
could  not  be  pulled  down  without  the  aid  of  a  foreign  army, 
is  a  circumstance  not  very  grateful  to  our  national  pride 
Yet  this  is  the  least  degrading  part  of  the  story.  The 
shameless  insincerity,  the  warm  assurances  of  general  sup- 
port which  James  received,  down  to  the  moment  of  general 


262 

desertion,  indicate  a  meanness  of  spirit  and  a  looseness  of 
morality  most  disgraceful  to  the  age.  That  the  enterprise 
succeeded,  at  least  that  it  succeeded  without  bloodshed  or 
commotion,  was  principally  owing  to  an  act  of  ungrateful 
perfidy,  such  as  no  soldier  had  ever  before  committed,  and 
to  those  monstrous  fictions  respecting  the  birth  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales,  which  persons  of  the  highest  rank  were 
not  ashamed  to  circulate.  In  all  the  proceedings  of  the 
Convention,  in  the  conference  particularly,  we  see  that 
littleness  of  mind  which  is  the  chief  characteristic  of  the 
times.  The  resolutions  on  which  the  two  Houses  at  last 
agreed  were  as  bad  as  any  resolutions  for  so  excellent  a 
purpose  could  be.  Their  feeble  and  contradictory  language 
was  evidently  intended  to  save  the  credit  of  the  Tories,  who 
were  ashamed  to  name  what  they  were  not  ashamed  to  do. 
Through  the  whole  transaction,  no  commanding  talents  were 
displayed  by  any  Englishman ;  no  extraordinary  risks 
were  run ;  no  sacrifices  were  made,  except  the  sacrifice 
which  Churchill  made  of  honour,  and  Anne  of  natural 
afi"ection. 

It  was  in  some  sense  fortunate,  as  we  have  already  said, 
for  the  Church  of  England,  that  the  Reformation  in  this 
country  was  efiected  by  men  who  cared  little  about  religion. 
And,  in  the  same  manner,  it  was  fortunate  for  our  civil 
government  that  the  Revolution  was  in  a  great  measure 
efi'ected  by  men  who  cared  little  about  their  political  prin- 
ciples. At  such  a  crisis,  splendid  talents  and  strong  passions 
might  have  done  more  harm  than  good.  There  was  far 
greater  reason  to  fear  that  too  much  would  be  attempted, 
and  that  violent  movements  would  produce  an  equally  vio- 
lent reaction,  than  that  too  little  would  be  done  in  the  way 
of  change.  But  narrowness  of  intellect,  and  flexibility  of 
principles,  though  they  may  be  serviceable,  can  never  be 
respectable. 

If  in  the  Revolution  itself  there  was  little  that  can  pro- 
perly be  called  glorious,  there  was  still  less  in  the  events 
which  followed.  In  a  church  which  had  as  one  man 
declared  the  doctrine  of  resistance  unchristian,  only  four 
hundred  persons  refused  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  a 
government  founded  on  resistance  !  In  the  preceding  gene- 
ration, both  the  Episcopal  and  the  Presbyterian  clergy,  rather 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  263 

than  concede  points  of  conscience  not  more  important,  had 
resigned  their  livings  by  thousands. 

The  churchmen,  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution,  justified 
their  conduct  by  all  those  profligate  sophisms  which  are 
called  Jesuitical,  and  which  are  commonly  reckoned  among 
the  peculiar  sins  of  Popery ;  but  which,  in  fact,  are  everywhere 
the  anodynes  employed  by  minds  rather  subtle  than  strong, 
to  quiet  those  internal  twinges  which  they  cannot  but  feel, 
and  which  they  will  not  obey.  As  their  oath  was  in  the 
teeth  of  their  principles,  so  was  their  conduct  in  the  teeth  of 
their  oath.  Their  constant  machinations  against  the  govern- 
ment to  which  they  had  sworn  fidelity,  brought  a  reproach 
on  their  order,  and  on  Christianity  itself.  A  distinguished 
churchman  has  not  scrupled  to  say,^  that  the  rapid  increase 
of  infidelity  at  that  time  was  principally  produced  by  the 
disgust  which  the  faithless  conduct  of  his  brethren  excited, 
in  men  not  sufficiently  candid  or  judicious,  to  discern  the 
beauties  of  the  system  amidst  the  vices  of  its  ministers. 

But  the  reproach  was  not  confined  to  the  church.  In 
every  political  party,  in  the  cabinet  itself,  duplicity  and 
perfidy  abounded.  The  very  men  whom  William  loaded 
with  benefits,  and  in  whom  he  reposed  most  confidence,  with 
his  seals  of  office  in  their  hands,  kept  up  a  correspondence 
with  the  exiled  family.  Oxford,  Carmarthen,  and  Shrews- 
bury were  guilty  of  this  odious  treachery.  Even  Devonshire 
is  not  altogether  free  from  suspicion.  It  may  well  be  con- 
ceived that,  at  such  a  time,  such  a  nature  as  that  of  Marl- 
borough would  riot  in  the  very  luxury  of  baseness.  His 
former  treason,  thoroughly  furnished  with  all  that  makes 
infamy  exquisite,  placed  him  indeed  under  the  disadvantages 
which  attends  every  artist  from  the  time  that  he  produces 
a  master-piece.  Yet  his  second  great  stroke  may  excite 
wonder,  even  in  those  who  appreciate  all  the  merit  of  the 
first.  Lest  his  admirers  should  be  able  to  say,  that  at  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  he  had  betrayed  his  king  from  any 
other  than  selfish  motives,  he  proceeded  to  betray  his 
country.  He  sent  intelligence  to  the  French  court  of  a  secret 
expedition  intended  to  attack  Brest.  The  consequence  was 
that  the  expedition  failed,  and  that  eight  hundred  British 
soldiers  lost  their  lives  from  the  abandoned  villa:ay  of  a 
British  general.     Yet  this  man  has  been  canonized  by  sc 


264        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

many  eminent  writers,  that  to  speak  of  him  as  he  deserves 
may  seem  scarcely  decent.  To  us  he  seems  to  be  the  very 
San  Ciappelletto  of  the  political  calendar. 

The  reign  of  William  the  Third,  as  JMr.  Hallam  happily 
says,  was  the  nadir  of  the  national  prosperity.  It  was  also 
the  nadir  of  the  national  character.  During  that  period 
was  gathered  in  the  rank  harvest  of  vices  sown  during 
thirty  years  of  licentiousness  and  confusion;  but  it  was 
also  the  seed-time  of  great  virtues. 

The  press  was  emancipated  from  the  censorship  soon 
after  the  Revolution ;  and  the  government  fell  immediately 
under  the  censorship  of  the  press.  Statesmen  had  a  scru- 
tiny to  endure,  which  was  every  day  becoming  more  and 
more  severe.  The  extreme  violence  of  opinions  abated. 
The  Whigs  learned  moderation  in  office ;  the  Tories  learned 
the  principles  of  liberty  in  opposition.  The  parties  almost 
constantly  approximated,  often  met,  sometimes  crossed  each 
other.  There  were  occasional  bursts  of  violence ;  but  from 
the  time  of  the  Revolution  those  bursts  were  constantly 
becoming  less  and  less  terrible.  The  severities  with  which 
the  Tories,  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Anne,  treated  some 
of  those  who  had  directed  public  affairs  during  the  war  of 
the  Grand  Alliance,  and  the  retaliatory  measures  of  the 
Whigs  after  the  accession  of  the  House  of  Hanover,  cannot 
be  justified;  but  they  were  by  no  means  in  the  style  of  the 
infuriated  parties,  whose  alternate  murders  had  disgraced 
our  history  towards  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second.  At  the  fall  of  Walpole,  far  greater  moderation 
was  displayed.  And  from  that  time  it  has  been  the  practice 
— a  practice  not  strictly  according  to  the  theory  of  our 
constitution,  but  still  most  salutary — to  consider  the  loss 
of  office,  and  the  public  disapprobation,  as  punishments 
sufficient  for  errors  in  the  administration  not  imputable  to 
personal  corruption.  Nothing,  we  believe,  has  contributed 
more  than  this  lenity  to  raise  the  character  of  public  men. 
Ambition  is  of  itself  a  game  sufficiently  hazardous  and  suf- 
ficiently deep  to  inflame  the  passions,  without  adding  pro- 
perty, life,  and  liberty  to  the  stake.  Where  the  play  runs 
so  desperately  high  as  in  the  seventeenth  century,  honour  is 
at  an  end.  Statesmen,  instead  of  being,  as  they  should  be,  at 
once  mild  and  steady,  are  at  once  ferocious  and  inconsistent. 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  265 

The  axe  is  for  ever  before  their  eyes.  A  popular  outcry 
sometimes  unnerves  them^  and  sometimes  makes  them 
desperate ;  it  drives  them  to  unworthy  compliances,  or  to 
measures  of  vengeance  as  cruel  as  those  which  they  have 
reason  to  expect.  A  minister  in  our  times  need  not  fear  either 
to  be  firm  or  to  be  merciful.  Our  old  policy  in  this  respect 
was  as  absurd  as  that  of  the  king  in  the  Eastern  Tales,  who 
proclaimed  that  any  physician  who  pleased  might  come  to 
court  and  prescribe  for  his  disease^  but  that  if  the  remedies 
failed,  the  adventurer  should  lose  his  head.  It  is  easy  to 
conceive  how  many  able  men  would  refuse  to  undertake  the 
cure  on  such  conditions ;  how  much  the  sense  of  extreme 
danger  would  confuse  the  perceptions  and  cloud  the  in-tellect 
of  the  practitioner  at  the  very  crisis  which  most  called  for 
self-possession ;  and  how  strong  his  temptation  would  be,  if 
he  found  that  he  had  committed  a  blunder,  to  escape  the 
consequences  of  it  by  poisoning  his  patient. 

But  in  fact  it  would  have  been  impossible  since  the  Revo- 
lution to  punish  any  minister  for  the  general  course  of  his 
policy,  with  the  slightest  semblance  of  justice;  for  since 
that  time  no  minister  has  been  able  to  pursue  any  general 
course  of  policy  without  the  approbation  of  the  parliament. 
•The  most  important  effects  of  that  great  change  were,  as 
Mr.  Hallam  has  most  truly  said  and  most  ably  shown,  those 
which  it  indirectly  produced.  Thenceforward  it  became  the 
interest  of  the  executive  government  to  protect  those  very 
doctrines  which  an  executive  government  is  in  general 
inclined  to  persecute.  The  sovereign,  the  ministers,  the 
courtiers,  at  last  even  the  universities  and  the  clergy,  were 
changed  into  advocates  of  the  right  of  resistance.  In  the 
theory  of  the  Whigs,  in  the  situation  of  the  Tories,  in  the 
common  interest  of  all  public  men,  the  parliamentary  con- 
stitution of  the  country  found  perfect  security.  The  power 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  in  particular,  has  been  steadily 
on  the  increase.  By  the  practice  of  granting  supplies  for 
short  terms,  and  appropriating  them  to  particular  services, 
it  has  rendered  its  approbation  as  necessary  in  practice  to  all 
the  measures  of  the  executive  goveiUment,  as  it  is  in  theory 
to  a  legislative  act. 

Mr.  Hallam  appears  to  have  begun  with   the  reign  of 
Henry  the  Seventh,  as  the  period  at  which  what  is  called 

Vol.  L— 23 


266        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

modern  history,  in  contradistinction  to  the  history  of  the 
middle  ages,  is  generally  supposed  to  commence.  He  has 
stopped  at  the  accession  of  George  the  Third,  "  from  unwill- 
ingness,''  as  he  says,  "  to  excite  the  prejudices  of  modern 
politics,  especially  those  connected  with  personal  character/' 
These  two  eras,  we  think,  deserved  the  distinction  on  other 
grounds.  Our  remote  posterity,  when  looking  back  on  our 
history  in  that  comprehensive  manner  in  which  remote  pos- 
terity alone  can,  without  much  danger  of  error,  look  back 
on  it,  will  probably  observe  those  points  with  peculiar  in- 
terest. They  are,  if  we  mistake  not,  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  an  entire  and  separate  chapter  in  our  annals.  The 
period  which  lies  between  them  is  a  perfect  cycle,  a  great 
year  of  the  public  mind. 

In  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Seventh,  all  the  political  dif- 
ferences which  had  agitated  England  since  the  Norman 
conquest  seemed  to  be  set  at  rest.  The  long  and  fierce 
struggle  between  the  crown  and  the  barons  had  terminated. 
The  grievances  which  had  produced  the  rebellions  of  Tyler 
and  Cade  had  disappeared.  Villanage  was  scarcely  known. 
The  two  royal  houses  whose  conflicting  claims  had  long 
convulsed  the  kingdom,,  were  at  length  united.  The  claim- 
ants whose  pretensions,  just  or  unjust,  had  disturbed  the  new* 
settlement,  were  overthrown.  In  religion  there  was  no  open 
dissent,  and  probably  very  little  secret  heresy.  The  old 
subjects  of  contention,  in  short,  had  vanished;  those  which 
were  to  succeed  had  not  yet  appeared. 

Soon,  however,  new  principles  were  announced — princi- 
ples which  were  destined  to  keep  England  during  two  cen- 
turies and  a  half  in  a  state  of  commotion.  The  Reformation 
divided  the  people  into  two  great  parties.  The  Protestants 
were  victorious ;  they  again  subdivided  themselves.  Poli- 
tical systems  were  engrafted  on  theological  doctrines.  The 
mutual  animosities  of  the  two  parties  gradually  emerged 
into  the  light  of  public  life.  First  came  conflicts  in  parlia- 
ment; then  civil  war;  then  revolutions  upon  revolutions, 
each  attended  by  its  appurtenance  of  proscriptions,  and  per- 
secutions, and  tests;  each  followed  by  severe  measures  on 
the  part  of  the  conquerors ;  each  exciting  a  deadly  and  fes- 
tering hatred  in  the  conquered.  During  the  reign  of  George 
the  Second;  things  were  evidently  tending  to  repose.    At  the 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  267 

close  of  it  the  nation  had  completed  the  great  revolution 
which  commenced  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
and  was  again  at  rest.  The  fury  of  sects  had  died  away. 
The  Catholics  themselves  practically  enjoyed  toleration; 
and  more  than  toleration  they  did  not  yet  venture  even  to 
desire.  Jacobitism  was  a  mere  name.  Nobody  was  left  to 
fight  for  that  wretched  cause,  and  very  few  to  drink  for  it. 
The  constitution,  purchased  so  dearly,  was  on  every  side 
extolled  and  worshipped.  Even  those  distinctions  of  party 
which  must  almost  always  be  found  in  a  free  state,  could 
scarcely  be  traced.  The  two  great  bodies  which  from  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  had  been  gradually  tending  to  ap- 
proximation, were  now  united  in  emulous  support  of  that 
splendid  administration  which  smote  to  the  dust  both  the 
branches  of  the  House  of  Bourbon.  The  great  battle  for 
our  ecclesiastical  and  civil  polity  had  been  fought  and  won; 
the  wounds  had  been  healed ;  the  victors  and  the  vanquish- 
ed were  rejoicing  together.  Every  person  acquainted  with 
the  political  writers  of  the  last  generation,  will  recollect  the 
terms  in  which  they  generally  speak  of  that  time.  It  was  a 
glimjDse  of  a  golden  age  of  union  and  glory — a  short  interval 
of  rest,  which  had  been  preceded  by  centuries  of  agitation, 
and  which  centuries  of  agitation  were  destined  to  follow. 

How  soon  faction  again  began  to  ferment,  is  well  known. 
In  the  Letters  of  Junius,  in  Burke's  Thoughts  on  the  Cause 
of  the  Discontents,  and  in  many  other  writings  of  less  merit, 
the  violent  dissensions  which  speedily  convulsed  the  country 
are  imputed  to  the  system  of  favouritism  which  George  the 
Third  introduced,  to  the  influence  of  Bute,  or  the  profligacy 
of  those  who  called  themselves  the  king's  friends.  With 
all  deference  to  the  eminent  writers  to  whom  we  have  re- 
ferred, we  may  venture  to  say  that  they  lived  too  near  the 
events  of  which  they  treated  to  judge  of  them  correctly. 
The  schism  which  was  then  appearing  in  the  nation,  and 
which  has  been  from  that  time  almost  constantly  widening, 
had  little  in  common  with  those  which  had  divided  it  during 
the  reigns  of  the  Tudors  and  the  Stuarts.  The  symptoms 
of  popular  feeling,  indeed,  will  always  in  a  great  measure 
be  the  same;  but  the  principle  which  excited  that  feeling 
was  here  new.  The  support  which  was  given  to  Wilkes, 
the  clamour  for  reform  during  the  American  war,  the  dis- 


268  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

affected  conduct  of  large  classes  of  people  at  tlie  time  of 
the  French  Revolution,  no  more  resembled  the  opposition 
which  had  been  offered  to  the  government  of  Charles  the 
Second,  than  that  opposition  resembled  the  contest  between 
the  Roses. 

In  the  political  as  in  the  natural  body,  a  sensation  is  often 
referred  to  a  part  widely  different  from  that  in  which  it 
really  resides.  A  man  whose  leg  is  cut  off  fancies  that  he 
feels  a  pain  in  his  toe;  and  in  the  same  manner  the  people, 
in  the  earlier  part  of  the  late  reign  sincerely  attributed  their 
discontent  to  grievances  which  had  been  effectually  lopped 
off.  They  imagined  that  the  prerogative  was  too  strong  for 
the  constitution,  that  the  principles  of  the  Revolution  were 
abandoned,  and  the  system  of  the  Stuarts  restored.  Every 
impartial  man  must  now  acknowledge  that  these  charges 
were  groundless.  The  proceedings  of  the  government  with 
respect  to  the  Middlesex  election  would  have  been  contem- 
plated with  delight  by  the  first  generation  of  Whigs.  They 
would  have  thought  it  a  splendid  triumph  of  the  cause  of 
liberty,  that  the  king  and  the  lords  should  resign  to  the 
House  of  Commons  a  portion  of  their  legislative  power,  and 
allow  it  to  incapacitate  without  their  consent.  This,  indeed, 
Mr.  Burke  clearly  perceived.  ^'  When  the  House  of  Com- 
mons,^' says  he,  '•'■  in  an  endeavour  to  obtain  new  advantages 
at  the  expense  of  the  other  orders  of  the  state,  for  the  benefit 
of  the  commons  at  large,  have  pursued  strong  measures,  if 
it  were  not  just,  it  was  at  least  natural,  that  the  constituents 
should  connive  at  all  their  proceedings,  because  we  our- 
selves were  ultimately  to  profit.  But  when  this  submission 
is  urged  to  us  in  a  contest  between  the  representatives  and 
ourselves,  and  where  nothing  can  be  put  into  their  scale 
which  is  not  taken  from  ours,  they  fancy  us  to  be  children 
when  they  tell  us  that  they  are  our  representatives,  our  own 
flesh  and  blood,  and  that  all  the  stripes  they  give  us  are  for 
our  good.^'  These  sentences  contain,  in  fact,  the  whole 
explanation  of  the  mystery.  The  conflict  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  maintained  by  the  parliament  against  the  crown. 
The  conflict  which  commenced  in  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  which  still  remains  undecided,  and  in  which 
our  children  and  grandchildren  will  probably  be  called  to 
act  or  suffer,  is  between  a  large  portion  of  the  people  on  the 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  269 

one  side,  and  the  crown  and  the  parliament  united  on  the 

The  privileges  of  the  House  of  Commons,  those  privileges 
which  in  1642  all  London  rose  in  arms  to  defend,  which 
the  people  considered  as  synonymous  with  their  own  liber- 
ties, and  in  comparison  with  which  they  took  no  account  ot 
the  most  precious  and  sacred  principles  of  English  juris- 
prudence, have  now  become  nearly  as  odious  as  the  rigours 
of  martial  law.     That  power  of  committing,  which  the  peo- 
ple anciently  loved  to  see  the  House  of  Commons  exercise, 
is  now,  at  least  when  employed  against  libellers,  the  most 
unpopular  power  in  the  constitution.    If  the  Commoi^  were 
to  suffer  the  Lords  to  amend  money-bills,  we  do  not  believe 
that  the  people  would  care  one  straw  about  the  matter,     it 
they  were  to  suffer  the  Lords  even  to  originate  money-bills, 
we  doubt  whether  such  a  surrender  of  their  constitutional 
ri2;hts  would  excite   half   so  much  dissatisfaction   as   the 
exclusion  of  strangers  from  a  single  important  discussion. 
The  gallery  in  which  the  reporters  sit  has  become  a  tourth 
estate  of  the  realm.     The  publication  of  the  debates,  a  prac- 
tice which  seemed  to  the  most  liberal  statesmen  of  the  old 
school  full  of  danger  to  the  great  safeguards  of  public  liber- 
ty is  now  regarded  by  many  persons  as  a  safeguard,  tanta- 
mount, and  more  than  tantamount,  to  all  the  rest  togetner. 
Burke,  in  a  speech  on  parliamentary  reform,  which  is  the 
more  remarkable  because  it  was  delivered  long  before  the 
French  revolution,  has  described,  in  striking  language,  the 
change  in  public  feeling  of  which  we  speak.     "  It  suggests 
melancholy  reflections,"  says  he,  "in  consequence  ot  the 
strange  course  we  have  long  held,  that  we  are  now  no  longer 
quarrelling  about  the  character  or  about  the  conduct  of  men, 
or  the  tenor  of  measures;  but  we  are  grown  out  of  humour 
with  the  English  constitution  itself;   this  is  become  the 
object  of  the  animosity  of  Englishmen.     This  constitution 
in  former  days  used  to  be  the  envy  of  the  world;  it  was  the 
pattern  for  politicians,  the  theme  of  the  eloquent,  the  medi- 
tation of  the  philosopher  in  every  part  of  the  world.     As  to 
Englishmen,  it  was  their  pride,  their  consolation.     -By  it 
they  lived,  and  for  it  they  were  ready  to  die.     Its  detects, 
if  it  had  any,  were  partly  covered  by  partiality,  and  part.y 
borne  by  prudence.     Now  all  its  excellencies  are  forgot,  its 


270         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

faults  are  forcibly  dragged  into  day,  exaggerated  by  every 
artifice  of  misrepresentation.  It  is  despised  and  rejected 
of  men,  and  every  device  and  invention  of  ingenuity  or 
idleness  is  set  up  in  opposition  or  in  preference  to  it.'^  "We 
neither  adopt  nor  condemn  the  language  of  reprobation 
which  the  great  orator  here  employs ;  we  call  him  only  as 
witness  to  the  fact.  That  the  revolution  of  public  feeling 
which  he  described  was  then  in  progress,  is  indisputable; 
and  it  is  equally  indisputable,  we  think,  that  it  is  in  progress 
still. 

To  investigate  and  classify  the  cause  of  so  great  a  change, 
would  require  far  more  thought  and  far  more  space,  than  we 
at  present  have  to  bestow.  But  some  of  them  are  obvious. 
During  the  contest  which  the  parliament  carried  on  against 
the  Stuarts,  it  had  only  to  check  and  complain;  it  has  since 
had  to  govern.  As  an  attacking  body,  it  could  select  its 
points  of  attacks,  and  it  naturally  chose  those  on  which  it 
was  likely  to  receive  public  support.  As  a  ruling  body,  it 
has  neither  the  same  liberty  of  choice  nor  the  same  interest 
to  gratify  the  people.  With  the  power  of  an  executive 
government,  it  has  drawn  to  itself  some  of  the  vices  and 
all  the  unpopularity  of  an  executive  government.  On  the 
House  of  Commons  above  all,  possessed  as  it  is  of  the  public 
purse,  and  consequently  of  the  public  sword,  the  nation 
throws  all  the  blame  of  an  ill-conducted  war,  of  a  blunder- 
ing negotiation,  of  a  disgraceful  treaty,  of  an  embarrassing 
commercial  crisis.  The  delays  of  the  Court  of  Chancery, 
the  misconduct  of  a  judge  at  Van  Diemen's  Land,  any  thing, 
in  short,  which  in  any  part  of  the  administration  any  person 
feels  as  a  grievance,  is  attributed  to  the  tyranny,  or  at  least 
to  the  negligence  of  that  all-powerful  body.  Private  indi- 
viduals pester  it  with  their  wrongs  and  claims.  A  merchant 
appeals  to  it  from  the  courts  of  Rio  Janeiro  or  St.  Peters- 
burg. A  painter,  who  can  find  nobody  to  buy  the  acre  of 
spoiled  canvas  which  he  calls  an  historical  picture,  pours 
into  its  sympathizing  ear  the  whole  story  of  his  debts  and 
his  jealousies.  Anciently  the  parliament  resembled  a  mem- 
ber of  opposition,  from  whom  no  places  are  expected,  who 
is  not  required  to  confer  favours  and  propose  measures,  but 
merely  to  watch  and  censure ;  and  who  may,  therefore,  un- 
less he  is  grossly  injudicious,  be  popular  with  the  great  body 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  271 

of  the  community.  The  parliament  now  resembles  the  same 
person  put  into  office,  surrounded  by  petitioners,  whom  twenty 
times  his  patronage  would  not  satisfy,  stunned  with  com- 
plaints, buried  in  memorials,  compelled  by  the  duties  of  his 
station  to  bring  forward  measures  similar  to  those  which  he 
was  formerly  accustomed  to  observe  and  to  check,  and  per- 
petually encountered  by  objections  similar  to  those  which 
it  was  formerly  his  business  to  raise. 

Perhaps  it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  general  rule,  that  a 
legislative  assembly,  not  constituted  on  democratic  principles, 
cannot  be  popular  long  after  it  ceases  to  be  weak.  Its  zeal 
for  what  the  people,  rightly  or  wrongly,  conceive  to  be  their 
interest,  its  sympathy  with  their  mutable  and  violent  pas- 
sions, are  merely  the  effects  of  the  particular  circumstances 
in  which  it  is  placed.  As  long  as  it  depends  for  existence  on 
the  public  favour,  it  will  employ  all  the  means  in  its  power  to 
conciliate  that  favour.  While  this  is  the  case*  defects  in  its 
constitution  are  of  little  consequence.  But  as  the  close  union 
of  such  a  body  with  the  nation  is  the  effect  of  an  identity  of 
interest,  not  essential,  but  accidental,  it  is  in  some  measure 
dissolved  from  the  time  at  which  the  danger  which  produced 
it  cease*  to  exist. 

Hence  before  the  Revolution,  the  question  of  parliament- 
ary reform  was  of  very  little  importance.  The  friends  of 
liberty  had  no  very  ardent  wish  for  it.  The  strongest  Tories 
saw  no  objections  to  it.  It  is  remarkable  that  Clarendon 
loudly  applauds  the  changes  which  Cromwell  introduced, 
changes  far  stronger  than  the  Whigs  of  the  present  day 
would  in  general  approve.  There  is  no  reason  to  think, 
however,  that  the  reform  effected  by  Cromwell  made  any 
great  difference  in  the  conduct  of  the  Parliament.  Indeed, 
if  the  House  of  Commons  had,  during  the  reign  of  Charles 
the  Second,  been  elected  by  universal  suffrage,  or  if  all  the 
seats  had  been  put  up  to  sale,  as  in  the  French  Parliaments, 
it  would,  we  suspect,  have  acted  very  much  as  it  did.  We 
know  how  strongly  the  Parliament  of  Paris  exerted  itself  in 
favour  of  the  people  on  many  important  occasions  ;  and  the 
reason  is  evident.  Though  it  did  not  emanate  from  the 
people,  its  whole  consequence  depended  on  the  support  of 
the  people.  Prom  the  time  of  the  Revolution  the  House  of 
Commons  was  gradually  becoming  what  it  now  is — a  great 


272        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

council  of  state,  containing  many  members  chosen  freely  by 
the  people,  and  many  others  anxious  to  acquire  the  favour 
of  the  people  ;  but,  on  the  whole,  aristocratical  in  its  temper 
and  interest.  It  is  very  far  from  being  an  illiberal  and  stu- 
pid oligarchy ;  but  it  is  equally  far  from  being  an  express 
image  of  the  general  feeling.  It  is  influenced  by  the  opinion 
of  the  people,  and  influenced  powerfully,  but  slowly  and 
circuitously.  Instead  of  outrunning  the  public  mind,  as  be- 
fore the  Revolution  it  frequently  did,  it  now  follows  with 
slow  steps  and  at  a  wide  distance.  It  is  therefore  necessa- 
rily unpopular ;  and  the  more  so,  because  the  good  which  it 
produces  is  much  less  evident  to  common  perception  than 
the  evil  which  it  inflicts.  It  bears  the  blame  of  all  the  mis- 
chief which  is  done,  or  supposed  to  be  done,  by  its  authority 
or  by  its  connivance.  It  does  not  get  the  credit,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  having  prevented  those  innumerable  abuses, 
which  do  not  exist  solely  because  the  House  of  Commons 
exists. 

A  large  part  of  the  nation  is  certainly  desirous  of  a  re- 
form in  the  representative  system.  How  large  that  part 
may  be,  and  how  strong  its  desires  on  the  subject  may  be,  it 
is  difficult  to  say.  It  is  only  at  intervals  that  the  clamour  on 
the  subject  is  loud  and  vehement.  But  it  seems  to  us  that, 
during  the  remissions,  the  feeling  gathers  strength,  and  that 
every  successive  burst  is  more  violent  than  that  which  pre- 
ceded it.  The  public  attention  may  be  for  a  time  diverted 
to  the  Catholic  claims  or  the  Mercantile  code  ;  but  it  is 
probable  that  at  no  very  distant  period,  perhaps  in  the  life- 
time of  the  present  generation,  all  other  questions  will 
merge  in  that  which  is,  in  a  certain  degree,  connected  with 
them  all. 

Already  we  seem  to  ourselves  to  perceive  the  signs  of 
unquiet  times,  the  vague  presentiment  of  something  great 
and  strange  which  pervades  the  community ;  the  restless 
and  turbid  hopes  of  those  who  have  every  thing  to  gain,  the 
dimly  hinted  forebodings  of  those  who  have  every  thing  to 
lose.  Many  indications  might  be  mentioned,  in  themselves 
indeed  as  insignificant  as  straws;  but  e\en  the  direction  of 
a  straw,  to  borrow  the  illustration  of  Bacon,  will  show  from 
what  quarter  the  hurricane  is  setting  in. 

A  great  statesman  might,  by  judicious  and  timely  refor- 


hallam's  constitutional  history.  273 

mations,  by  reconciling  the  two  great  branches  of  the  natu- 
ral aristocracy,  the  capitalists  and  the  land  owners,  by  so 
widening  the  base  of  the  government  as  to  interest  in  its  de- 
fence the  whole  of  the  middling  class,  that  brave,  honest, 
and  sound-hearted  class,  which  is  as  anxious  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  order,  and  the  security  of  property,  as  it  is  hostile 
to  corruption  and  oppression,  succeed  in  averting  a  struggle 
to  which  no  national  friend  of  liberty  or  of  law  can  look  for- 
ward without  great  apprehensions.  There  are  those  who 
will  be  contented  with  nothing  but  demolition ;  and  there 
are  those  who  shrink  from  all  repair.  There  are  innovators 
who  long  for  a  President  and  a  National  Convention;  and 
there  are  bigots  who,  while  cities  larger  and  richer  than  the 
capitals  of  many  great  kingdoms  are  calling  out  for  repre- 
sentatives to  watch  over  their  interests,  select  some  hack- 
neyed jobber  in  boroughs,  some  peer  of  the  narrowest  and 
smallest  mind,  as  the  fittest  depository  of  a  forfeited  fran- 
chise. Between  these  extremes  there  lies  a  more  excellent 
way.  Time  is  bringing  around  another  crisis  analogous  to 
that  which  occurred  in  the  seventeenth  century.  "We  stand 
in  a  situation  similar  to  that  in  which  our  ancestors  stood 
under  the  reign  of  James  the  First.  It  will  soon  again  be 
necessary  to  reform,  that  we  may  preserve ;  to  save  the 
fundamental  principles  of  the  constitution,  by  alterations  in 
the  subordinate  parts.  It  will  then  be  possible,  as  it  was 
possible  two  hundred  years  ago,  to  protect  vested  rights,  to 
secure  every  useful  institution — every  institution  endeared 
by  antiquity  and  noble  associations ;  and,  at  the  same  time, 
to  introduce  into  the  system  improvements  harmonizing 
with  the  original  plan.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  two 
hundred  years  have  made  us  wiser. 

We  know  of  no  great  revolution  which  might  not  have 
been  prevented  by  compromise  early  and  graciously  made. 
Firmness  is  a  great  \4rtue  in  public  affairs ;  but  it  has  its 
proper  sphere.  Conspiracies  and  insurrrections  in  which 
small  minorities  are  engaged,  the  outbreakings  of  popular 
violence  unconnected  with  any  extensive  project  or  any  du- 
rable principle,  are  best  repressed  by  vigour  and  decision. 
To  shrink  from  them  is  to  make  them  formidable.  But  no 
wise  ruler  will  confound  the  pervading  taint  with  the  slight 
local  irritation.     No  wise  ruler  will  treat  the  deeply  seated 


274  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

discontents  of  a  great  party  as  lie  treats  the  conduct  of  a 
mob  whicli  destroys  mills  and  power-looms.  The  neglect 
of  this  distinction  has  been  fatal  even  to  governments  strong 
in  the  power  of  the  sword.  The  present  time  is  indeed  a 
time  of  peace  and  order.  But  it  is  at  such  a  time  that  fools 
are  most  thoughtless,  and  wise  men  most  thoughtful.  That 
the  discontents  which  have  agitated  the  country  during  the 
late  and  the  present  reign,  and  which,  though  not  always 
noisy,  are  never  wholly  dormant,  will  again  break  forth  with 
aggravated  symptoms,  is  almost  as  certain  as  that  the  tides 
and  seasons  will  follow  their  appointed  course.  But  in  all 
movements  of  the  human  mind  which  tend  to  great  revolu- 
tions there  is  a  crisis  at  which  moderate  concession  may 
amend,  conciliate,  and  preserve.  Happy  will  it  bo  for 
England  if,  at  that  crisis,  her  interests  be  confided  to  men 
for  whom  history  has  not  recorded  the  long  series  of  human 
crimes  and  follies  in  vain. 


[Edinburgh  Eeview.] 

It  would  be  scarcely  possible  for  a  man  of  Mr.  Southey's 
talents  and  acquirements  to  write  two  volumes  as  large  as 
those  before  us,  which  should  be  wholly  destitute  of  infor- 
mation and  amusement.  Yet  we  do  not  remember  to  have 
read  with  so  little  satisfaction  any  equal  quantity  of  matter, 
written  by  any  man  of  real  abilities.  We  have,  for  some 
time  past,  observed  with  great  regret  the  strange  infatuation 
which  leads  the  Poet-laureate  to  abandon  those  departments 
of  literature  in  which  he  might  excel,  and  to  lecture  the 
public  on  sciences  of  which  he  has  still  the  very  alphabet  to 
learn.  He  has  now,  we  think,  done  his  worst.  The  sub- 
ject which  he  has  at  last  undertaken  to  treat  is  one  which 
demands  all  the  highest  intellectual  and  moral  qualities  of  a 
philosophical  statesman — an  understanding  at  once  com- 
prehensive and  acute — a  heart  at  once  upright  and  charita- 
ble. Mr.  Southey  brings  to  the  task  two  faculties  which 
were  never,  ve  believe,  vouchsafed  in  measure  so  copious 
to  any  human  being ;  the  faculty  of  believing  without  a 
reason,  and  the  faculty  of  hating  without  a  provocation. 

It  is,  indeed,  most  extraordinary  that  a  mind  like  Mr. 
Southey' s,  a  mind  richly  endowed  in  many  respects  by  na- 
ture, and  highly  cultivated  by  study,  a  mind  which  has  exer- 
cised considerable  influence  on  the  most  enlightened  genera- 
tion of  the  most  enlightened  people  that  ever  existed,  should 
be  utterly  destitute  of  the  power  of  discerning  truth  from 


*  Sir  Thomas  More ;  or,  Colloquies  on  the  Progress  and  Prospects 
of  Society.  By  Robert  Southey,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  Poet-laureate, 
2  vols.  8to.  London.  1829. 

276 


276         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

falsehood.  Yet  such  is  the  fact.  Government  is  to  Mr. 
Southey  one  of  the  fine  arts.  He  judges  of  a  theory  or  a 
public  measure,  of  a  religion,  a  political  party,  a  peace  or  a 
war,  as  men  judge  of  a  picture  or  a  statue,  by  the  effect 
produced  on  his  imagination.  A  chain  of  associations  is  to 
him  what  a  chain  of  reasoning  is  to  other  men  ;  and  what 
he  calls  his  opinions  are,  in  fact,  merely  his  tastes. 

Part  of  this  description  might,  perhaps,  apply  to  a  much 
greater  man,  Mr.  Burke.  But  Mr.  Burke,  assuredly,  pos- 
sessed an  understanding  admirably  fitted  for  the  investiga- 
tion of  truth — an  understanding  stronger  thz.n  that  of  any 
statesman,  active  or  speculative,  of  the  eighteenth  century 
— stronger  than  every  thing,  except  his  own  fierce  and  un- 
governable sensibility.  Hence,  he  generally  chose  his  side 
like  a  fanatic,  and  defended  it  like  a  philosopher.  His  con- 
duct, in  the  most  important  events  of  his  life,  at  the  time  of 
the  impeachment  of  Hastings,  for  example,  and  at  the  time 
of  the  French  Revolution,  seems  to  have  been  prompted  by 
those  feelings  and  motives  which  Mr.  Coleridge  has  so  hap- 
pily described : 

"  Stormy  pity,  and  the  cherish'd  lure 
Of  pomp,  and  proud  precipitance  of  soul." 

Hindostan,  with  its  vast  cities,  its  gorgeous  pagodas,  its 
infinite  swarms  of  dusky  population,  its  long-descended 
dynasties,  its  stately  etiquette,  excited  in  a  mind  so  capa- 
cious, so  imaginative,  and  so  susceptible,  the  most  intense 
interest.  The  peculiarities  of  the  costume,  of  the  manners 
and  of  the  laws,  the  very  mystery  which  hung  over  the  lan- 
guage and  origin  of  the  people  seized  his  imagination.  To 
plead  in  Westminster  Hall,  in  the  name  of  the  English 
people,  at  the  bar  of  the  English  nobles,  for  gTcat  nations 
and  kings  separated  from  him  by  half  the  world,  seemed  to 
him  the  height  of  human  glory.  Again,  it  is  not  difficult  to 
perceive  that  his  hostility  to  the  French  Revolution  princi- 
pally arose  from  the  vexation  which  he  felt  at  having  all  his 
old  political  associations  disturbed,  at  seeing  the  well-known 
boundary  marks  of  states  obliterated,  and  the  names  and 
distinctions  with  which  the  history  of  Europe  had  been  filled 
for  ages  swept  away.     He  felt  like  an  antiquary  whose 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  277 

shield  had  been  scoured,  or  a  connoisseur  who  found  his 
Titian  retouched.  But  however  he  came  by  an  opinion,  he 
had  no  sooner  got  it  than  he  did  his  best  to  make  out  a 
legitimate  title  to  it.  His  reason,  like  a  spirit  in  the  service 
of  an  enchanter,  though  spell-bound,  was  still  mighty.  ^  It 
did  whatever  work  his  passions  and  his  imagination  might 
impose.  But  it  did  that  work,  however  arduous,  with  mar- 
vellous dexterity  and  vigour.  His  course  was  not  determined 
by  argument ;  but  he  could  defend  the  wildest  course  by 
arguments  more  plausible  than  those  by  which  common 
men  support  opinions  which  they  have  adopted,  after  the 
fullest  deliberation.  Keason  has  scarcely  ever  displayed, 
even  in  those  well-constituted  minds  of  which  sh^  occupies 
the  throne  so  much  power  and  energy  as  in  the  lowest 
offices  of  that  imperial  servitude. 

Now,  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Southey,  reason  has  no  place 
at  all,  as  either  leader  or  follower,  as  either  sovereign  or 
slave.  He  does  not  seem  to  know  what  an  argument  is. 
He  never  uses  arguments  himself.  He  never  troubles  him- 
self to  answer  the  arguments  of  his  opponents.  It  has  never 
occurred  to  him,  that  a  man  ought  to  be  able  to  give  some 
better  account  of  the  way  in  which  he  has  arrived  at  his 
opinions,  than  merely  that  it  is  his  will  and  pleasure  to  hold 
them,  that  there  is  a  difference  between  assertion  and 
demonstration,  that  a  rumour  does  not  always  prove  a  fact, 
that  a  fact  does  not  always  prove  a  theory,  that  two  con- 
tradictory propositions  cannot  be  undeniable  truths,  that  to 
beg  the  question  is  not  the  way  to  settle  it,  or  that  when  an 
objection  is  raised,  it  ought  to  be  met  with  something  more 
convincing  than  "scoundrel"  and  ''blockhead." 

It  would  be  absurd  to  read  the  works  of  such  a  writer  for 
political  instruction.  The  utmost  that  can  be  expected  from 
any  system  promulgated  by  him  is,  that  it  may  be  splendid 
and  affecting,  that  it  may  suggest  sublime  and  pleasing 
images.  His  scheme  of  philosophy  is  a  mere  daydream,  a 
poetical  creation,  like  the  Domdaniel  caverns,  the  Swerga, 
or  Padalon  ]  and,  indeed,  it  bears  no  inconsiderable  resem- 
blance to  those  gorgeous  visions.  Like  them,  it  has  some- 
thing of  invention,  grandeur,  and  brilliancy.  But,  like 
them,  it   is   grotesque    and    extravagant,  and  perpetually 

Vol.  L— 24 


278        macaulay's  miscellaneous  avritings. 

violates  tliat  conventional  probability  wbich  is  essential  to 
the  effect  even  of  works  of  art. 

The  warmest  admirers  of  Mr.  Southey  will  scarcely,  we 
think,  deny  that  his  success  has  almost  always  borne  an 
inverse  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  his  undertakings 
have  required  a  logical  head.  His  poems,  taken  in  the 
mass,  stand  far  higher  than  his  prose  works.  The  Laureate 
Odes,  indeed,  among  which  the  Vision  of  Judgment  must 
be  classed,  are,  for  the  most  part,  worse  than  Pye's  and  as 
bad  as  Gibber's;  nor  do  we  think  him  generally  happy  in 
short  pieces.  But  his  longer  poems,  though  full  of  faults, 
are  nevertheless  very  extraordinary  productions.  We  doubt 
greatly  whether  they  will  be  read  fifty  years  hence ;  but 
that,  if  they  are  read,  they  will  be  admired,  we  have  no 
doubt  whatever. 

But  though  in  general  we  prefer  Mr.  Southey's  poetry 
to  his  prose,  we  must  make  one  exception.  The  Life  of 
Nelson  is,  beyond  all  doubt,  the  most  perfect  and  the  most 
delightful  of  his  works.  The  fact  is,  as  his  poems  most 
abundantly  prove,  that  he  is  by  no  means  so  skilful  in 
designing  as  filling  up.  It  was  therefore  an  advantage  to 
him  to  be  furnished  with  an  outline  of  characters  and  events, 
and  to  have  no  other  task  to  perform  than  that  of  touching 
the  cold  sketch  into  life.  No  writer,  perhaps,  ever  lived, 
whose  talents  so  precisely  qualified  him  to  write  the  history 
of  the  great  naval  warrior.  There  were  no  fine  riddles  of 
the  human  heart  to  read,  no  theories  to  found,  no  hidden 
causes  to  develope,  no  remote  consequences  to  predict.  The 
character  of  the  hero  lay  on  the  surface.  The  exploits  were 
brilliant  and  picturesque.  The  necessity  of  adhering  to  the 
real  course  of  events  saved  Mr.  Southey  from  those  faults 
which  deform  the  original  plan  of  almost  every  one  of  his 
poems,  and  which  even  his  innumerable  beauties  of  detail 
scarcely  redeem.  The  subject  did  not  require  the  exercise 
of  those  reasoning  powers,  the  want  of  which  is  the  blemish 
of  his  prose.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  find,  in  all  literary 
history,  an  instance  of  a  more  exact  hit  between  wind  and 
water.  John  Wesley,  and  the  Peninsular  War,  were  sub- 
jects of  a  very  different  kind, — subjects  which  required  all 
the  qualities  of  a  philosophic  historian.  In  Mr.  Southey's 
works  on  these  subjects  he  has,  on  the  whole,  failed.     Yet 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  279 

there  are  charming  specimens  of  the  art  of  narration  in  both 
of  them.  The  Life  of  Wesley  will  probably  live.  Defective 
as  it  is,  it  contains  the  only  popular  account  of  a  most  re- 
markable moral  revolution,  and  of  a  man  whose  eloquence 
and  logical  acuteness  might  have  rendered  him  eminent  in 
literature,  whose  genius  for  government  was  not  inferior  to 
that  of  Richelieu,  and  who,  whatever  his  errors  may  have 
been,  devoted  all  his  powers,  in  defiance  of  obloquy  and 
derision,  to  what  he  sincerely  considered  as  the  highest  good 
of  his  species.  The  History  of  the  Peninsular  War  is  already 
dead :  indeed  the  second  volume  was  dead-born.  The  glory 
of  producing  an  imperishable  record  of  that  great  conflict 
seems  to  be  reserved  for  Colonel  Xapier. 

The  Book  of  the  Church  contains  some  stories  very  pret- 
tily told.  The  rest  is  mere  rubbish.  The  adventure  vas 
manifestly  one  which  could  be  achieved  only  by  a  profound 
thinker,  and  in  which  even  a  profound  thinker  might  have 
failed,  unless  his  passions  had  been  kept  under  strict  control. 
In  all  those  works  in  which  Mr.  Southey  has  completely 
abandoned  narration,  and  undertaken  to  argue  moral  and 
political  questions,  his  failure  has  been  complete  and  igno- 
minious. On  such  occasions,  his  writings  are  rescued  from 
utter  contempt  and  derision,  solely  by  the  beauty  and  purity 
of  the  English,  We  find^  we  confess,  so  great  a  charm  in 
Mr.  Southey's  style,  that,  even  when  he  writes  nonsense, 
we  generally  read  it  with  pleasure,  except  indeed  where  he 
tries  to  be  droll.  A  more  insufi'erable  jester  never  existed. 
He  very  often  attempts  to  be  humorous,  and  yet  we  do  not 
remember  a  single  occasion  on  which  he  has  succeeded 
further  than  to  be  quaintly  and  flippantly  dull.  In  one  of 
his  works,  he  tells  us  that  Bishop  Sprat  was  very  properly 
so  called,  inasmuch  as  he  was  a  very  small  poet.  And  in 
the  book  now  before  us,  he  cannot  quote  Francis  Bugg  with- 
out a  remark  on  his  unsavory  name.  A  man  might  talk 
folly  like  this  by  his  own  fireside ;  but  that  any  human 
being,  after  having  made  such  a  joke,  should  write  it  down, 
and  copy  it  out,  and  transmit  it  to  the  printer,  and  correct 
the  proof-sheets,  and  send  it  forth  into  the  world,  is  enough 
to  make  us  ashamed  of  our  species. 

The  extraordinary  bitterness  of  spirit  which  Mr.  Southey 
manifests  towards  his  opponents  is,  no  doubt,  in  a  greai 


280       macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

measure  to  be  attributed  to  the  manner  in  wbich  he  forms 
his  opinions.  Differences  of  taste,  it  has  often  been  re- 
marked, produce  greater  exasperation  than  differences  on 
points  of  science.  But  this  is  not  all.  A  peculiar  austerity 
marks  almost  all  Mr.  Southey's  judgments  of  men  and 
actions.  We  are  far  from  blaming  him  for  fixing  on  a  high 
standard  of  morals,  and  for  applying  that  standard  to  every 
case.  But  rigour  ought  to  be  accompanied  by  discernment, 
and  of  discernment  Mr.  Southy  seems  to  be  utterly  destitute. 
His  mode  of  judging  is  monkish;  it  is  exactly  what  we 
should  expect  from  a  stern  old  Benedictine,  who  had  been 
preserved  from  many  ordinary  frailties  by  the  restraints  of 
his  situation.  No  man  out  of  a  cloister  ever  wrote  about 
love,  for  example,  so  coldly  and  at  the  same  time  so  grossly. 
His  descriptions  of  it  are  just  what  we  should  hear  from  a 
recluse,  who  knew  the  passion  only  from  the  details  of  the 
confessional.  Almost  all  his  heroes  make  love  either  like 
seraphim  or  like  cattle.  He  seems  to  have  no  notion  of  any 
thing  between  the  Platonic  passion  of  the  G-lendoveer,  who 
gazes  with  rapture  on  his  mistress's  leprosy,  and  the  brutal 
appetite  of  Arvalan  and  Roderick.  In  Boderick,  indeed, 
the  two  characters  are  united.  He  is  first  all  clay,  and  then 
all  spirit,  he  goes  forth  a  Tarquin,  and  comes  back  too 
ethereal  to  be  man-ied.  The  only  love-scene,  as  far  as  we 
can  recollect,  in  Madoc,  consists  of  the  delicate  attentions 
which  a  savage,  who  has  drunk  too  much  of  the  prince's 
metheglin,  offers  to  Goervyl.  It  would  be  the  labour  of  a, 
week  to  find,  in  all  the  vast  mass  of  Mr.  Southey's  poetry, 
a  single  passage  indicating  any  sympathy  with  those  feelings 
which  have  consecrated  the  shades  of  Yaucluse  and  the 
rocks  of  Meillerie. 

Indeed,  if  we  except  some  very  pleasing  images  of  paternal 
tenderness  and  filial  duty,  there  is  scarcely  any  thing  soft  or 
humane  in  Mr.  Southey's  poetry.  What  theologians  call 
the  spiritual  sins  are  his  cardinal  virtues — hatred,  pride, 
and  the  insatiable  thirst  of  vengeance.  These  passions  he 
disguises  under  the  name  of  duties ;  he  purifies  them  from 
the  alloy  of  vulgar  interests ;  he  ennobles  them  by  uniting 
them  with  energy,  fortitude,  and  a  severe  sanctity  of  man- 
ners, and  then  holds  them  up  to  the  admiration  of  mankind. 
This  is  the  spirit  of  Thalaba,  of  Ladurlad,  of  Adosinda,  of 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  281 

Roderick  after  his  regeneration.  It  is  tlie  spirit  which,  in 
all  his  writings,  Mr.  Southey  appears  to  eiFect.  "  I  do  well 
to  be  angry,''  seems  to  be  the  predominant  feeling  of  his 
mind.  Almost  the  only  mark  of  charity  which  he  vouch- 
safes to  his  opponents,  is  to  pray  for  their  conversion  •  and 
this  he  does  in  terms  not  unlike  those  in  which  we  can 
imagine  a  Portuguese  priest  interceding  with  Heaven  for  a 
Jew  delivered  over  to  the  secular  arm  after  a  relapse. 

We  have  always  heard,  and  fully  believe,  that  Mr. 
Southey  is  a  very  amiable  and  humane  man ;  nor  do  we 
intend  to  apply  to  him  personally  any  of  the  remarks  which 
we  have  made  on  the  spirit  of  his  writings.  Such  are  the 
caprices  of  human  nature.  Even  Uncle  Toby  troubled 
himself  very  little  about  the  French  grenadiers  who  fell  on 
the  glacis  of  Namur.  And  when  Mr.  Southey  takes  up  his 
pen,  he  changes  his  nature  as  much  as  Captain  Shandy 
when  he  girt  on  his  sword.  The  only  opponents  to  whom 
he  gives  quarter  are  those  in  whom  he  finds  something  of 
his  own  character  reflected.  He  seems  to  have  an  instinctive 
antipathy  for  calm,  moderate  men — for  men  who  shun  ex- 
tremes, and  who  render  reasons.  He  has  treated  Mr.  Owen 
of  Lanark,  for  example,  with  infinitely  more  respect  than 
he  has  shown  to  Mr.  Hallam  or  to  Dr.  Lingard ;  and  this 
for  no  reason  that  we  can  discover,  except  that  Mr.  Owen  is 
more  unreasonably  and  hopelessly  in  the  wrong  than  any 
speculator  of  our  time. 

Mr.  Southey's  political  system  is  just  what  we  might 
expect  from  a  man  who  regards  politics,  not  as  a  matter  of 
science,  but  as  a  matter  of  taste  and  feeling.  All  his 
schemes  of  government  have  been  inconsistent  with  them- 
selves. In  his  youth  he  was  a  republican ;  yet,  as  he  tells 
us  in  his  preface  to  these  Colloquies,  he  was  even  then 
opposed  to  the  Catholic  claims.  He  is  now  a  violent 
Ultra-Tory.  Yet,  while  he  maintains  with  vehemence  ap- 
proaching to  ferocity,  all  the  sterner  and  harsher  parts  of 
the  Ultra-Tory  theory  of  government,  the  baser  and  dirtier 
part  of  that  theory  disgusts  him.  Exclusion,  persecution, 
severe  punishments  for  libellers  and  demagogues,  proscrip- 
tions, massacres,  civil  war,  if  necessary,  rather  than  any 
concession  to  a  discontented  people — these  are  the  measures 
which   he  seems  inclined  to  recommend.      A  severe  and 

24* 


282  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

gloomy  tyranny,  crushing  opposition,  silencing  remon- 
strance, drilling  the  minds  of  the  people  into  unreasoning 
obedience,  has  in  it  something  of  grandeur  which  delights 
his  imagination.  But  there  is  nothing  fine  in  the  shabby 
tricks  and  jobs  of  ofiice.  And  Mr.  Southey,  accordingly, 
has  no  toleration  for  them.  When  a  democrat,  he  did  not 
perceive  that  his  system  led  logically,  and  would  have  led 
practically,  to  the  removal  of  religious  distinctions.  He 
now  commits  a  similar  error.  He  renounces  the  abject  and 
paltry  part  of  the  creed  of  his  party,  without  perceiving  that 
it  is  also  an  essential  part  of  that  creed.  He  would  have 
tyranny  and  purity  together;  though  the  most  superficial 
observation  might  have  shown  him  that  there  can  be  no 
tyranny  without  corruption. 

It  is  high  time,  however,  that  we  should  proceed  to  the 
consideration  of  the  work,  which  is  our  more  immediate 
subject,  and  which,  indeed,  illustrates  in  almost  every  page 
©ur  general  remarks  on  Mr.  Southey's  writings.  In  the 
preface,  we  are  informed  that  the  author,  notwithstanding 
some  statements  to  the  contrary,  was  always  opposed  to  the 
Catholic  claims.  We  fully  believe  this }  both  because  we 
are  sure  that  Mr.  Southey  is  incapable  of  publishing  a 
deliberate  falsehood,  and  because  his  averment  is  in  itself 
probable.  It  is  exactly  what  we  should  have  expected  that, 
even  in  his  wildest  paroxysms  of  democratic  enthusiasm,  Mr. 
Southey  would  have  felt  no  wish  to  see  a  simple  remedy 
applied  to  a  great  practical  evil ;  that  the  only  measure, 
which  all  the  great  statesmen  of  two  generations  have  agreed 
with  each  other  in  supporting,  would  be  the  only  measure 
which  Mr.  Southey  would  have  agreed  with  himself  in 
opposing.  He  had  passed  from  one  extreme  of  political 
opinion  to  another,  as  Satan  in  Milton  went  round  the  globe, 
contriving  constantly  to  ^^  ride  with  darkness.^'  Wherever 
the  thickest  shadow  of  the  night  may  at  any  moment  chance 
to  fall,  there  is  Mr.  Southey.  It  is  not  everybody  who 
could  have  so  dexterously  avoided  blundering  on  the  daylight 
in  the  course  of  a  journey  to  the  Antipodes. 

Mr.  Southey  has  not  been  fortunate  in  the  plan  of  any  of 
his  fictitious  narratives.  But  he  has  never  failed  so  con- 
spicuously, as  in  the  work  before  us ;  except,  indeed,  in  the 
wretched  Vision  of  Judgment.  In  November,  1817,  it  seems, 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  283 

the  Laureate  was  sitting  over  his  newspaper,  and  meditating 
about  the  death  of  the  Princess  Charlotte.  An  elderly  per- 
son, of  very  dignified  aspect,  makes  his  appearance,  an- 
nounces himself  as  a  stranger  from  a  distant  country,  and 
apologizes  very  politely  for  not  having  provided  himself 
with  letters  of  introduction.  Mr.  Southey  supposes  his 
visitor  to  be  some  American  gentleman,  who  has  come  to 
see  the  lakes  and  the  lake-poets,  and  accordingly  proceeds 
to  perform,  with  that  grace  which  only  long  experience  can 
give,  all  the  duties  which  authors  owe  to  starers.  He  as- 
sures his  guest  that  some  of  the  most  agreeable  visits  which 
he  has  received  have  been  from  Americans,  and  that  he 
knows  men  among  them  whose  talents  and  virtues  would  do 
honour  to  any  country.  In  passing,  we  may  observe,  to  the 
honour  of  Mr.  Southey,  that,  though  he  evidently  has  no 
liking  for  the  American  institutions,  he  never  speaks  of  the 
people  of  the  United  States  with  that  pitiful  aifectation  of 
contempt,  by  which  some  members  of  his  party  have  done 
more  than  wars  or  tariffs  can  do  to  excite  mutual  enmity 
between  two  communities  formed  for  mutual  friendship. 
Great  as  the  faults  of  his  mind  are,  paltry  spite  like  this  has 
no  place  in  it.  Indeed,  it  is  scarcely  conceivable  that  a  man 
of  his  sensibility  and  his  imagination  should  look  without 
pleasure  and  national  pride  on  the  vigorous  and  splendid 
youth  of  a  great  people,  whose  veins  are  filled  with  our 
blood,  whose  minds  are  nourished  with  our  literature,  and 
on  whom  is  entailed  the  rich  inheritance  of  our  civilization, 
our  freedom,  and  our  glory. 

But  we  must  now  return  to  Mr.  Southey's  study  at  Kes- 
wick. The  visitor  informs  the  hospitable  poet  that  he  is  not 
an  American,  but  a  spirit.  Mr.  Southey,  with  more  frank- 
ness than  civility,  tells  him  that  he  is  a  very  queer  one.  The 
stranger  holds  out  his  hand.  It  has  neither  weight  nor 
substance.  Mr.  Southey  upon  this  becomes  more  serious; 
his  hair  stands  on  end;  and  he  adjures  the  spectre  to  tell 
him  what  he  is,  and  why  he  comes.  The  ghost  turns  out  to 
be  Sir  Thomas  More.  The  traces  of  martyrdom,  it  seems, 
are  worn  in  the  other  world,  as  stars  and  ribands  are  worn 
in  this.  Sir  Thomas  shows  the  poet  a  red  streak  round  his 
neck,  brighter  than  a  ruby,  and  informs  him  that  Cranmer 
wears  a  suit  of  flames  in  Paradise,  the  right-hand  glove,  wa 
suppose,  of  peculiar  brilliancy. 


284  MACAULAY'S   ^^SCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

Sir  Thomas  pays  but  a  short  visit  on  this  occasion,  but 
promises  to  cultivate  the  new  acquaintance  which  he  has 
formed,  and,  after  begging  that  his  visit  may  be  kept  secret 
from  Mrs.  Southey,  vanishes  into  air. 

The  rest  of  the  book  consists  of  conversations  between 
Mr.  Southey  and  the  spirit,  about  trade,  currency.  Catholic 
emancipation,  periodical  literature,  female  nunneries,  butch- 
ers, snuff,  book-stalls,  and  a  hundred  other  subjects.  Mr. 
Southey  very  hospitably  takes  an  opportunity  to  lionize  the 
ghost  round  the  lakes,  and  directs  his  attention  to  the  most 
beautiful  points  of  view.  Why  a  spirit  was  to  be  evoked 
for  the  purpose  of  talking  over  such  matters,  and  seeing  such 
sights,  why  the  vicar  of  the  parish,  a  blue-stocking  from 
London,  or  an  American,  such  as  Mr.  Southey  supposed  his 
aerial  visiter  to  be,  might  not  have  done  as  well,  we  are 
unable  to  conceive.  Sir  Thomas  tells  Mr.  Southey  nothing 
about  future  events,  and  indeed  absolutely  disclaims  the  gift 
of  prescience.  He  has  learned  to  talk  modern  English :  he 
has  read  all  the  new  publications,  and  loves  a  jest  as  well  as 
when  he  jested  with  the  executioner,  though  we  cannot  say 
that  the  quality  of  his  wit  has  materially  improved  in  Para- 
dise. His  powers  of  reasoning,  too,  are  by  no  means*  in  as 
great  vigour  as  when  he  sate  on  the  woolsack;  and  though 
he  boasts  that  he  is  "divested  of  all  those  passions  which 
cloud  the  intellects  and  warp  the  understandings  of  men,'"' 
we  think  him,  we  must  confess,  far  less  stoical  than  formerly. 
As  to  revelations,  he  tells  Mr.  Southey  at  the  outset  to  expect 
none  from  him.  The  laureate  expresses  some  doubts,  which 
assuredly  will  not  raise  him  in  the  opinion  of  our  modern 
millenarians,  as  to  the  divine  authority  of  the  Apocalypse. 
But  the  ghost  preserves  an  impenetrable  silence.  As  far  as 
we  remember,  only  one  hint  about  the  employments  of  dis- 
imbodied  spirits  escapes  him.  He  encourages  Mr.  Southey 
to  hope  that  there  is  a  Paradise  Press,  at  which  all  the  valua- 
ble publications  of  Mr.  Murray  and  Mr.  Colburn  are  reprinted 
as  regularly  as  at  Philadelphia;  and  delicately  insinuates, 
that  Thalaba  and  the  Curse  of  Kehama  are  among  the  number. 
"What  a  contrast  does  this  absurd  fiction  present  to  those 
charming  narratives  which  Plato  and  Cicero  prefix  to  their 
dialogues  !  What  cost  in  machinery,  yet  what  poverty  of 
effect !     A  ghost  brought  in  to  say  what  any  man  might  have 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  285 

said !  The  glorified  spirit  of  a  great  statesman  and  philoso- 
pher dawdling,  like  a  bilious  old  nabob  at  a  watering-place, 
over  quarterly  reviews  and  novels,  dropping  in  to  pay  long 
calls,  making  excursions  in  search  of  the  picturesque  !  The 
scene  of  St.  Greorge  and  St.  Denys  in  the  Pucelle  is  hardly 
more  ridiculous.  We  know  what  Voltaire  meant.  Nobody, 
however,  can  suppose  that  Mr.  Southey  means  to  make 
game  of  the  mysteries  of  a  higher  state  of  existence.  The 
fact  is,  that  in  the  work  before  us,  in  the  Vision  of  Judgment, 
and  in  some  of  his  other  pieces,  his  mode  of  treating  the 
most  solemn  subjects  differs  from  that  of  open  scoffers,  only 
as  the  extravagant  representations  of  sacred  persons  and 
things  in  some  grotesque  Italian  paintings  differ  from  the 
caricatures  which  Carlile  exposes  in  the  front  of  his  shop. 
We  interpret  the  particular  act  by  the  general  character. 
What  in  the  window  of  a  convicted  blasphemer  we  call  blas- 
phemous, we  call  only  absurd  and  ill-judged  in  an  altar-piece. 

We  now  come  to  the  conversations  which  pass  between 
Mr.  Southey  and  Sir  Thomas  More,  or  rather  between  two 
Southeys  equally  eloquent,  equally  angry,  equally  unrea- 
sonable, and  equally  given  to  talking  about  what  they  do  not 
understand.  Perhaps  we  could  not  select  a  better  instance 
of  the  spirit  which  pervades  the  whole  book  than  the  discus- 
sion touching  butchers.  These  persons  are  represented  as 
castaways,  as  men  whose  employment  hebetates  the  facul- 
ties and  hardens  the  heart.  Not  that  the  poet  has  any 
scruples  about  the  use  of  animal  food.  He  acknowledges  that 
it  is  for  the  good  of  the  animals  themselves  that  men  should 
feed  upon  them.  ^'Nevertheless,"  says  he,  ''I  cannot  but 
acknowledge,  like  good  old  John  Fox,  that  the  sight  of  a 
slaughter-house  or  shambles,  if  it  does  not  disturb  this  clear 
conviction,  excites  in  me  uneasiness  and  pain,  as  well  as 
loathing.  And  that  they  produce  a  worse  effect  upon  the 
persons  employed  in  them,  is  a  fact  acknowledged  by  the 
law  or  custom  which  excludes  such  persons  from  sitting  on 
juries  upon  cases  of  life  and  death." 

This  is  a  fair  specimen  of  Mr.  Southey's  mode  of  looking 
at  all  moral  questions.  Here  is  a  body  of  men,  engaged  in 
an  employment,  which,  by  his  own  account,  is  beneficial, 
not  only  to  mankind,  but  to  the  very  creatures  on  whom  we 
feed      Yet  he  represents  them  as  men  who  are  necessarily 


286        macaulay's  miscellaneo  its  writings. 

reprobates,  as  men  who  must  necessarily  be  reprobates  even 
in  the  most  improved  state  of  society,  even,  to  use  his  own 
phrase,  in  a  Christian  Utopia.  And  what  reasons  are  given 
for  a  judgment  so  directly  opposed  to  every  principle  of 
sound  and  manly  morality?  Merely  this,  that  he  cannot 
abide  the  sight  of  their  apparatus ;  that,  from  certain  pecu- 
liar associations,  he  is  affected  with  disgust  when  he  passes 
by  their  shops.  He  gives,  indeed,  another  reason;  a  cer- 
tain law  or  custom,  which  never  existed  but  in  the  ima- 
ginations of  old  women,  and  which,  if  it  had  existed,  would 
have  proved  just  as  much  against  butchers  as  the  ancient 
prejudice  against  the  practice  of  taking  interest  for  money 
proves  against  the  merchants  of  England.  •.  Is  a  surgeon  a 
castaway  ?  We  believe  that  nurses,  when  they  instruct 
children  in  that  venerable  law  or  custom  which  Mr.  Southey 
so  highly  approves,  generally  join  the  surgeon  to  the  butcher. 
A  dissecting-room  would,  we  should  think,  affect  the  nerves 
of  most  people  as  much  as  a  butcher's  shambles.  But  the 
most  amusing  circumstance  is,  that  Mr.  Southey,  who  de- 
tests a  butcher,  should  look  with  special  favour  on  a  soldier. 
He  seems  highly  to  approve  of  the  sentiment  of  General 
Meadows,  who  swore  that  a  grenadier  was  the  highest  cha- 
racter in  this  world  or  in  the  next :  and  assures  us  that  a 
virtuous  soldier  is  placed  in  the  situation  which  most  tends 
to  his  improvement,  and  will  most  promote  his  eternal  in- 
terests. Human  blood,  indeed,  is  by  no  means  an  object  of 
so  much  loathing  to  Mr.  Southey,  as  the  hides  and  paunches 
of  cattle.  In  1814,  he  poured  forth  poetical  maledictions 
on  all  who  talked  of  peace  with  Bonaparte.  He  went  over 
the  field  of  Waterloo,  a  field  beneath  which  twenty  thou- 
sand of  the  stoutest  hearts  that  ever  beat  are  mouldering, 
and  came  back  in  an  ecstasy,  which  he  mistook  for  poetical 
inspiration.  In  most  of  his  poems,  particularly  in  his  best 
poem,  Roderick,  and  in  most  of  his  prose  works,  particularly 
in  The  History  of  the  Peninsular  War,  he  shows  a  delight 
in  snuffing  up  carnage,  which  would  not  have  misbecome  a 
Scandinavian  bard,  but  which  sometimes  seems  to  harmonize 
ill  with  the  Christian  morality.  We  do  not,  however,  blame 
Mr.  Southey  for  exulting,  even  a  little  ferociously,  in  the 
brave  deeds  of  his  countrymen,  or  for  finding  something 
"comely  and  reviving"  in  the  bloody  vengeance  inflicted  by 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  287 

an  oppressed  people  on  its  oppressors.  Now,  surely,  if  we 
find  that  a  man  whose  business  is  to  kill  Frenchmen  may 
be  humane,  we  may  hope  that  means  may  be  found  to  ren- 
der a  man  humane  whose  business  is  to  kill  sheep.  If  the 
brutalizing  effect  of  such  scenes  as  the  storming  of  St.  Sebas- 
tian may  be  counteracted,  we  may  hope  that,  in  a  Christian 
Utopia,  some  minds  might  be  proof  against  the  kennels  and 
dresses  of  Aldgate.  Mr.  Southey's  feeling,  however,  is 
easily  explained.  A  butcher's  knife  is  by  no  means  so 
elegant  as  a  sabre,  and  a  calf  does  not  bleed  with  half  the 
grace  of  a  poor  wounded  hussar. 

It  is  in  the  same  manner  that  Mr.  Southey  appears  to  have 
formed  his  opinions  of  the  manufacturing  system.  There 
is  nothing  which  he  hates  so  bitterly.  It  is,  according  to 
him,  a  system  more  tyrannical  ttian  that  of  the  feudal  ages, 
a  system  of  actual  servitude,  a  system  which  destroys  the 
bodies  and  degrades  the  minds  of  those  who  are  engaged 
in  it.  He  expresses  a  hope  that  the  competition  of  other 
nations  may  drive  us  out  of  the  field ;  that  our  foreign  trade 
may  decline,  and  that,  we  may  thus  enjoy  a  restoration  of 
national  sanity  and  strength.  But  he  seems  to  think  that 
the  extermination  of  the  whole  manufacturing  population 
would  be  a  blessing,  if  the  evil  could  be  removed  in  no 
other  way. 

Mr.  Southey  does  not  bring  forward  a  single  fact  in  sup- 
port of  these  views,  and,  as  it  seems  to  us,  there  are  facts 
which  lead  to  a  very  different  conclusion.  In  the  first  place, 
the  poor-rate  is  very  decidedly  lower  in  the  manufacturing 
than  in  the  agricultural  districts.  If  Mr.  Southey  will  look 
over  the  Parliamentary  returns  on  this  subject,  he  will  find 
that  the  amount  of  parish  relief  required  by  the  labourers 
in  the  different  counties  of  England  is  almost  exactly  in 
inverse  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  the  manufacturing 
system  has  been  introduced  into  those  counties.  The  re- 
turns for  the  year  ending  in  March,  1825,  and  in  March, 
1828,  are  now  before  us.  In  the  former  year,  we  find  the 
poor-rates  highest  in  Sussex — about  20s.  to  every  inhabit- 
ant. Then  come  Buckinghamshire,  Essex,  Suffolk,  Bed- 
fordshire, Huntingdonshire,  Kent,  and  Norfolk.  In  all  these 
the  rate  is  above  15s.  a  head.  We  will  not  go  through  the 
whole.     Even  in  Westmoreland,  and  the  North  Riding  of 


288  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS    WRITINGS. 

Yorkshire,  the  rate  is  at  more  than  8.s.  In  Cumberland  and 
Monmouthshire,  the  most  fortunate  of  all  the  agricultural 
districts,  it  is  at  6s.  But  in  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire, 
it  is  as  low  as  5s.;  and  when  we  come  to  Lancashire,  we 
find  it  at  4s.,  one-fifth  of  what  it  is  in  Sussex.  The  re- 
turns of  the  year  ending  in  March,  1828,  are  a  little,  and 
but  a  little,  more  unfavourable  to  the  manufacturing  dis- 
tricts. Lancashire,  even  in  that  season  of  distress,  required 
a  smaller  poor-rate  than  any  other  district,  and  little  more 
than  one-fourth  of  the  poor-rate  raised  in  Sussex.  Cumber- 
land alone,  of  the  agricultural  districts,  was  as  well  off  as 
the  "West  Riding  of  Yorkshire.  These  facts  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  the  manufacturer  is  both  in  a  more  comfortable 
and  in  a  less  dependent  situation  than  the  agricultural  la- 
bourer. 

As  to  the  effect  of  the  manufacturing  system  on  the  bo- 
dily health,  we  must  beg  leave  to  estimate  it  by  a  standard 
far  too  low  and  vulgar  for  a  mind  so  imaginative  as  that  of 
Mr.  Southey,  the  proportion  of  births  and  deaths.  We 
know  that,  during  the  growth  of  this  atrocious  system,  this 
new  misery,  (we  use  the  phrase  of  Mr.  Southey,)  this  new 
enormity,  this  birth  of  a  portentous  age,  this  pest,  which 
no  man  can  approve  whose  heart  is  not  seared,  or  whose 
understanding  has  not  been  darkened,  there  has  been  a  great 
diminution  of  mortality,  and  that  this  diminution  has  been 
greater  in  the  manufacturing  towns  than  anywhere  else. 
The  mortality  still  is,  as  it  always  was,  greater  in  towns 
than  in  the  country.  But  the  difference  has  diminished  in 
an  extraordinary  degree.  There  is  the  best  reason  to  be- 
lieve, that  the  annual  mortality  of  Manchester,  about  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  was  one  in  twenty-eight.  It  is 
now  reckoned  at  one  in  forty-five.  In  Glasgow  and  Leeds, 
a  similar  improvement  has  taken  place.  Nay,  the  rate  of 
mortality  in  those  three  great  capitals  of  the  manufacturing 
districts  is  now  considerably  less  than  it  was  fifty  years 
ago  over  England  and  Wales  taken  together,  open  country 
and  all.  We  might  with  some  plausibility  maintain,  that 
the  people  live  longer  because  they  are  better  fed,  better 
lodged,  better  clothed,  and  better  attended  in  sickness;  and 
that  these  improvements  are  owing  to  that  increase  of  na- 
tional wealth  which  the  manufacturing  system  has  produced. 


289 

Much  more  might  be  said  on  this  subject.  But  to  what 
end  ?  It  is  not  from  bills  of  mortality  and  statistical  tables 
that  Mr.  Southey  has  learned  his  political  creed.  He  cannot 
stoop  to  study  the  history  of  the  system  which  he  abuses,  to 
strike  the  balance  between  the  good  and  evil  which  it  has 
produced,  to  compare  district  with  district,  or  generation 
with  generation.  We  will  give  his  own  reasons  for  his 
opinion,  the  only  reason  which  he  gives  for  it,  in  his  own 
words : 

"We  remained  awhile  in  silence,  looking  upon  the  assem- 
olage  of  dwellings  below.  Here,  and  in  the  adjoining  hamlet 
of  Millbeck,  the  effects  of  manufactures  and  of  agriculture 
may  be  seen  and  compared.  The  old  cottages  are  such  as 
the  poet  and  the  painter  equally  delight  in  beholding.  Sub- 
stantially built  of  the  native  stone,  without  mortar,  dirtied 
with  no  white  lime,  and  their  long,  low  roofs  covered  with 
slate  j  if  they  had  been  raised  by  the  magic  of  some  indige- 
nous Amphion's  music,  the  materials  could  not  have  adjusted 
themselves  more  beautifully  in  accord  with  the  surrounding 
scene ;  and  time  has  still  further  harmonized  them  with 
weather-stains,  lichens,  and  moss,  short  grasses,  and  short 
fern,  and  stone-plants  of  various  kinds.  The  ornamented 
chimneys,  round  or  square,  less  adorned  than  those  which, 
like  little  turrets,  crest  the  houses  of  the  Portuguese  pea- 
santry, and  yet  not  less  happily  suited  to  their  place ;  the 
hedge  of  dipt  box  beneath  the  windows,  the  rose-bushes 
beside  the  door,  the  little  patch  of  flower-ground,  with  its 
tall  hollyhocks  in  front;  the  garden  beside,  the  bee-hives, 
and  the  orchard  with  its  bank  of  daffodils  and  snow-drops, 
the  earliest  and  the  profusest  in  these  parts,  indicate  in  the 
owners  some  portion  of  ease  and  leisure,  some  regard  to 
neatness  and  comfort,  some  sense  of  natural  and  innocent  and 
healthful  enjoyment.  The  new  cottages  of  the  manufacturers 
are  upon  the  manufacturing  pattern — naked,  and  in  a  row. 

"How  is  it,  said  I,  that  every  thing  which  is  connected 
with  manufactures  presents  such  features  of  unqualified 
deformity  ?  From  the  largest  of  Mammon's  temples  down 
to  the  poorest  hovel  in  which  his  helotry  are  stalled,  these 
edifices  have  all  one  character.  Time  will  not  mellow  them ; 
nature  will  never  clothe  nor  conceal  them ;  and  they  will 
remain  always  as  offensive  to  the  eye  as  to  the  mind." 

Vol.  I.— 25 


290         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Here  is  wisdom.  Here  are  the  principles  on  which 
nations  are  to  be  governed.  Rose-bushes  and  poor-rates, 
rather  than  steam-engines  and  independence.  Mortality  and 
cottages  with  weather-stains,  rather  than  health  and  long 
life  with  edifices  which  time  cannot  mellow.  We  are  told, 
that  our  age  has  invented  atrocities  beyond  the  imagination 
of  our  fathers ;  that  society  has  been  brought  into  a  state, 
compared  with  which  extermination  would  be  a  blessing ; 
and  all  because  the  dwellings  of  cotton-spinners  are  naked 
and  rectangular.  Mr.  Sou  they  has  found  out  a  way,  he  tells 
us,  in  which  the  effects  of  manufactures  and  agriculture  may 
be  compared.  And  what  is  this  way  ?  To  stand  on  a  hill, 
to  look  at  a  cottage  and  a  manufactory,  and  to  see  which  is 
the  prettier.  Does  Mr.  Southey  think  that  the  body  of  the 
English  peasantry  live,  or  ever  lived,  in  substantial  and 
ornamented  cottages,  with  box-hedges,  flower-gardens,  bee- 
hives, and  orchards  ?  If  not,  what  is  his  parallel  worth  ? 
We  despise  those  filosofastri,  who  think  that  they  serve  the 
caiise  of  science  by  depreciating  literature  and  the  fine  arts. 
But  if  any  thing  could  excuse  their  narrowness  of  mind,  it 
would  be  such  a  book  as  this.  It  is  not  strange  that  when 
one  enthusiast  makes  the  picturesque  the  test  of  political 
good,  another  should  feel  inclined  to  proscribe  altogether 
the  pleasures  of  taste  and  imagination. 

Thus  it  is  that  Mr.  Southey  reasons  about  matters  with 
which  he  thinks  himself  perfectly  conversant.  We  cannot, 
therefore,  be  surprised  to  find  that  he  commits  extraordinary 
blunders  when  he  writes  on  points  of  which  he  acknow- 
ledges himself  to  be  ignorant.  He  confesses  that  he  is  not 
versed  in  political  economy,  that  he  has  neither  liking  nor 
aptitude  for  it ;  and  he  then  proceeds  to  read  the  public  a 
lecture  concerning  it,  which  fully  bears  out  his  confession. 

^^All  wealth,"  says  Sir  Thomas  More,  "in  former  times 
was  tangible.  It  consisted  in  land,  money,  or  chattels, 
which  were  either  of  real  or  conventional  value." 

Montesinos,  as  Mr.  Southey  somewhat  affectedly  calls 
himself,  answers: 

"  Jewels,  for  example,  and  pictures,  as  in  Holland — 
where,  indeed,  at  one  time,  tulip-bulbs  answered  the  same 
purpose." 

"  That  bubble,"  says  Sir  Thomas,  "  was  one  of  those 


SOUTHEY^S   COLLOQUIES   ON    SOCIETY.  291 

contagious  insanities  to  which  communities  are  subject. 
All  wealth  was  real,  till  the  extent  of  commerce  rendered 
a  paper  currency  necessary ;  which  differed  from  precious 
stones  and  pictures  in  this  important  point,  that  there  was 
no  limit  to  its  production/' 

"  We  regard  it,"  says  Montesinos,  "  as  the  representative 
of  real  wealth ;  and,  therefore,  limited  always  to  the  amount 
of  what  it  represents. '^ 

"Pursue  that  notion,''  answers  the  ghost,  "and  you  will 
be  in  the  dark  presently.  Your  provincial  bank-notes, 
which  constitute  almost  wholly  the  circulating  medium  of 
certain  districts,  pass  current  to-day.  To-morrow,  tidings 
may  come  that  the  house  which  issued  them  has  stopped 
payment,  and  what  do  they  represent  then  ?  You  will  find 
them  the  shadow  of  a  shade." 

We  scarcely  know  at  which  end  to  begin  to  disentangle 
this  knot  of  absurdities.  We  might  ask,  why  it  should  be 
a  greater  proof  of  insanity  in  men  to  set  a  high  value  on  rare 
tulips  than  on  rare  stones,  which  are  neither  more  useful 
nor  more  beautiful  ?  We  might  ask,  how  it  can  be  said 
that  there  is  no  limit  to  the  production  of  paper-money, 
when  a  man  is  hanged  if  he  issues  any  in  the  name  of 
another,  and  is  forced  to  cash  what  he  issues  in  his  own? 
But  Mr.  Southey's  error  lies  deeper  still.  "All  wealth," 
says  he,  "was  tangible  and  real,  till  paper  currency  was 
introduced."  Now,  was  there  ever,  since  man  emerged 
from  a  state  of  utter  barbarism,  an  age  in  which  there  were 
no  debts  ?  Is  not  a  debt,  while  the  solvency  of  the  debtor 
is  undoubted,  always  reckoned  as  part  of  the  wealth  of  the 
creditor?  Yet  is  it  tangible  and  real  wealth?  Does  it 
cease  to  be  wealth,  because  there  is  the  security  of  a  written 
acknowledgement  for  it  ?  And  what  else  is  paper  currency  ? 
Did  Mr.  Southey  ever  read  a  bank-note?  If  he  did,  he 
would  see  that  it  is  a  written  acknowledgement  of  a  debt, 
and  a  promise  to  pay  that  debt.  The  promise  may  be  vio- 
lated, the  debt  may  remain  unpaid,  those  to  whom  it  was 
due  may  suffer :  but  this  is  a  risk  not  confined  to  cases  of 
paper  currency;  it  is  a  risk  inseparable  from  the  relation 
of  debtor  and  creditor.  Every  man  who  sells  goods  for  any 
thing  but  ready  money  runs  the  risk  of  finding  that  what 
he  considered  as  part  of  his  wealth  one  day,  is  nothing  at 


292         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

all  the  next  day.  Mr.  Southey  refers  to  the  picture-gal- 
leries of  Holland.  The  pictures  were  undoubtedly  real 
and  tangible  possessions.  But  surely  it  might  happen,  that 
a  burgomaster  might  owe  a  picture-dealer  a  thousand 
guilders  for  a  Teniers.  What  in  this  case  corresponds  to 
our  paper  money  is  not  the  picture,  which  is  tangible,  but 
the  claim  of  the  picture-dealer  on  his  customer  for  the  price 
of  the  picture,  which  is  not  tangible.  Now,  would  not  the 
picture-dealer  consider  this  claim  as  part  of  his  wealth? 
Would  not  a  tradesman,  who  knew  of  it,  give  credit  to  the 
picture-dealer  the  more  readily  on  account  of  it  ?  The  bur- 
gomaster might  be  ruined.  If  so,  would  not  those  conse- 
quences follow  which,  as  Mr.  Southey  tells  us,  were  never 
heard  of  till  paper-money  came  into  use  ?  Yesterday  this 
claim  was  worth  a  thousand  guilders.  To-day  what  is  it  ? 
The  shadow  of  a  shade. 

It  is  true,  that  the  more  readily  claims  of  this  sort  are 
transferred  from  hand  to  hand,  the  more  extensive  will  be 
the  injury  produced  by  a  single  failure.  The  laws  of  all 
nations  sanction,  in  certain  cases,  the  transfer  of  rights  not 
yet  reduced  into  possession.  Mr.  Southey  would  scarcely 
wish,  we  should  think,  that  all  endorsements  of  bills  and 
notes  should  be  declared  invalid.  Yet,  even  if  this  were 
done,  the  transfer  of  claims  would  imperceptibly  take  place 
to  a  very  great  extent.  AVhen  the  baker  trusts  the  butcher, 
for  example,  he  is  in  fact,  though  not  in  form,  trusting  the 
butcher's  customers.  A  man  who  owes  large  bills  to 
tradesmen,  and  fails  to  pay  them,  almost  always  produces 
distress  through  a  very  wide  circle  of  people  whom  he  never 
dealt  with. 

In  short,  what  Mr.  Southey  takes  for  a  difference  in  kind, 
is  only  a  difference  of  form  and  degree.  In  every  society 
men  have  claims  on  the  property  of  others.  In  every 
society  there  is  a  possibility  that  some  debtors  may  not  be 
able  to  fulfil  their  obligations.  In  every  society,  therefore, 
there  is  wealth  which  is  not  tangible,  and  which  may 
become  .the  shadow  of  a  shade. 

Mr.  Southey  then  proceeds  to  a  dissertation  on  the  na- 
tional debt,  which  he  considers  in  a  new  and  most  consola- 
tory light^  as  a  clear  addition  to  the  income  of  the  country. 


sotjthey's  colloquies  on  society.  293 

<^  You  can  understand/'  says  Sir  Thomas,  "  that  it  con- 
stitutes a  great  part  of  the  national  wealth." 

"  So  large  a  part,"  answers  Montesinos,  "  that^  the  in- 
terest amounted,  during  the  prosperous  time  of  agriculture, 
to  as  much  as  the  rental  of  all  the  land  in  Great  Britain ; 
and  at  present  to  the  rental  of  all  lands,  all  houses,  and  all 
other  fixed  property,  put  together."  ,    .    n 

The  ghost  and  the  laureate  agree  that  it  rs  very  desirable 
that  there  should  be  so  secure  and  advantageous  a  deposit 
for  wealth  as  the  funds  afford.  Sir  Thomas  then  proceeds : 
"Another  and  far  more  momentous  benefit  must  not 
be  overlooked:  the  expenditure  of  an  annual  interest, 
equalling,  as  you  have  stated,  the  present  rental  of  all  fixed 
property." 

"That  expenditure,"  quoth  Montesinos,  "gives  employ- 
ment to  half  the  industry  in  the  kingdom,  and  feeds  half 
the  mouths.  Take,  indeed,  the  weight  of  the  national  debt 
from  this  great  and  complicated  social  machine,  and  the 
wheels  must  stop." 

From  this  passage,  we  should  have  been  inclined  to  think 
that  Mr.  Southey  supposes  the  dividends  to  be  a  free  gift 
periodically  sent  down  from  heaven  to  the  fundholders,  as 
quails  and  manna  were  sent  to  the  Israelites ;  were  it  not 
that  he  has  vouchsafed,  in  the  following  question  and 
answer,  to  give  the  public  some  information  which,  we 
believe,  was  very  little  needed. 

"  Whence  comes  the  interest  ?"  says  Sir  Thomas. 
"  It  is  raised,"  answers  Montesinos,  "  by  taxation." 
Now,  has  Mr.  Southey  ever  considered  what  would  be 
done  with  this  sum,  if  it  were  not  paid  as  interest  to  the 
national  creditor?  If  he  would  think  over  this  matter  for 
a  short  time,  we  suspect  that  the  "  momentous  benefit"  of 
which,  he  talks  would  appear  to  him  to  shrink  strangely  in 
amount.  A  fundholder,  we  will  suppose,  spends  an  income 
of  five  hundred  pounds  a-year,  and  his  ten  nearest  neigh- 
bours pay  fifty  pounds  each  to  the  tax-gatherer,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  discharging  the  interest  of  the  national  debt.  If  the 
debt  were  wiped  out, — a  measure,  be  it  understood,  which  we 
by  no  means  recommend, — the  fundholder  would  cease  to 
spend  his  five  hundred  pounds  a-year.  He  would  no  longer 
give  employment  to  industry,  or  put  food  into  the  mouths  of 


294        macaijlay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

labourers.  This  Mr.  Southey  thinks  a  fearful  evil.  But  is 
there  no  mitigating  circumstance  ?  Each  of  his  ten  neigh- 
bours has  fifty  pounds  more  than  formerly.  Each  of  them 
will,  as  it  seems  to  our  feeble  understandings,  employ  more 
industry,  and  feed  more  mouths,  than  formerly.  The  sum 
is  exactly  the  same.  It  is  in  diiFerent  hands.  But  on  what 
grounds  does  Mr.  Southey  call  upon  us  to  believe  that  it  is 
in  the  hands  of  men  who  will  spend  less  liberally  or  less 
judiciously  ?  He  seems  to  think,  that  nobody  but  a  fund- 
holder  can  employ  the  poor ;  that  if  a  tax  is  remitted,  those 
who  formerly  used  to  pay  it  proceed  immediately  to  dig 
holes  in  the  earth,  and  bury  the  sum  which  the  government 
had  been  accustomed  to  take ;  that  no  money  can  set  industry 
in  motion  till  it  has  been  taken  by  the  tax-gatherer  out  of 
one  man's  pocket  and  put  into  another  man's.  We  really 
wish  that  Mr.  Southey  would  try  to  prove  this  principle, 
which  is  indeed  the  foundation  of  his  whole  theory  of 
finance ;  for  we  think  it  right  to  hint  to  him,  that  our  hard- 
hearted and  unimaginative  generation  will  expect  some  more 
satisfactory  reason  than  the  only  one  with  which  he  has  yet 
favoured  it — a  similitude  touching  evaporation  and  dew. 

Both  the  theory  and  the  illustration,  indeed,  are  old  friends 
of  ours.  In  every  season  of  distress  which  we  can  remember, 
Mr.  Southey  has  been  proclaiming  that  it  is  not  from 
economy,  but  from  increased  taxation,  that  the  country  must 
expect  relief;  and  he  still,  we  find,  places  the  undoubting 
faith  of  a  political  Diafoirus  in  his 

*'Resaignare,  repurgare,  et  reclysterizare." 

"A  people,'^  he  tells  us,  ^'may  be  too  rich,  but  a  govern- 
ment cannot  be  so." 

"A  state,"  says  he,  "cannot  have  more  wealth  at  its  com- 
mand than  may  be  employed  for  the  general  good,  a  liberal 
expenditure  in  national  works  being  one  of  the  surest  means 
for  promoting  national  prosperity;  and  the  benefit  being 
still  more  obvious,  of  an  expenditure  directed  to  the 
purposes  of  national  improvement.  But  a  people  may  be 
too  rich." 

We  fully  admit  that  a  state  cannot  have  at  its  command 
more  wealth  than  may  he  employed  for  the  general  good. 


SOUTHEY^S   COLLOQUIES  ON    SOCIETY.  295 

But  neither  can  individuals,  or  bodies  of  individuals,  have  at 
their  command  more  wealth  than  may  he  employed  for  the 
general  good.  If  there  be  no  limit  to  the  sum  which  may 
be  usefully  laid  out  in  public  works  and  national  improve- 
ment, then  wealth,  whether  in  the  hands  of  private  men  or 
of  the  government,  may  always,  if  the  possessor  choose  to 
spend  it  usefully,  be  usefully  spent.  The  only  ground, 
therefore,  on  which  Mr.  Southey  can  possibly  maintain  that 
a  government  cannot  be  too  rich,  but  that  a  people  may  be 
too  rich,  must  be  this,  that  governments  are  more  likely  to 
spend  their  money  on  good  objects  than  private  individuals. 

But  what  is  useful  expenditure  ?  "A  liberal  expenditure 
in  national  works,^^  says  Mr.  Southey,  '■'■  is  one  of  the  surest 
means  for  promoting  national  prosperity.'^  What  does  he 
mean  by  national  prosperity?  Does  he  mean  the  wealth 
of  the  state  ?  If  so,  his  reasoning  runs  thus  : — The  more 
wealth  a  state  has  the  better ;  for  the  more  wealth  a  state 
has  the  more  wealth  it  will  have.  This  is  surely  something 
like  that  fallacy,  which  is  ungallantly  termed  a  lady's 
reason.  If  by  national  prosperity  he  means  the  wealth  of 
the  people,  of  how  gross  a  contradiction  is  he  guilty.  A 
people,  he  tells  us,  may  be  too  rich ;  a  government  cannot ; 
for  a  government  can  employ  its  riches  in  making  the  peo- 
ple richer.  The  wealth  of  the  people  is  to  be  taken  from 
them,  because  they  have  too  much,  and  laid  out  in  works 
which  yield  them  more. 

We  are  really  at  a  loss  to  determine  whether  Mr.  Southey's 
reasons  for  recommending  large  taxation  is  that  it  will  make 
the  people  rich;  or  that  it  will  make  them  poor.  But  we 
are  sure  that  it  his  object  is  to  make  them  rich,  he  takes 
the  wrong  course.  There  are  two  or  three  principles  re- 
specting public  works,  which,  as  an  experience  of  vast  ex- 
tent proves,  may  be  trusted  in  almost  every  case. 

It  scarcely  ever  happens,  that  any  private  man,  or  body 
of  men,  will  invest  property  in  a  canal,  a  tunnel,  or  a  bridge, 
but  from  an  expectation  that  the  outlay  will  be  profitable  to 
them.  No  work  of  this  sort  can  be  profitable  to  private 
speculators,  unless  the  public  be  willing  to  pay  for  the  use 
of  it.  The  public  will  not  pay  of  their  own  accord  for  what 
yields  no  profit  or  convenience  to  them.  There  is  thus  a 
direct  and  obvious  connection  between  the  motive  which 


296        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

induces  individuals  to  undertake  such  a  work,  and  the  utility 
of  the  work. 

Can  we  find  any  such  connection  in  the  case  of  a  public 
work  executed  by  a  government  ?  If  it  is  useful,  are  the 
individuals  who  rule  the  country  richer  ?  If  it  is  useless,  are 
they  poorer  ?  A  public  man  may  be  solicitous  for  his  credit : 
but  is  not  he  likely  to  gain  more  credit  by  an  useless  dis- 
play of  ostentatious  architecture  in  a  great  town,  than  by 
the  best  road  or  the  best  canal  in  some  remote  province  ? 
The  fame  of  public  works  is  a  much  less  certain  test  of  their 
utility,  than  the  amount  of  toll  collected  at  them.  In  a 
corrupt  age  there  will  be  a  direct  embezzlement.  In  the 
purest  age,  there  will  be  abundance  of  jobbing.  Never 
were  the  statesmen  of  any  country  more  sensitive  to  public 
opinion,  and  more  spotless  in  pecuniary  transactions,  than 
those  who  have  of  late  governed  England.  Yet  we  have 
only  to  look  at  the  buildings  recently  erected  in  London  for 
a  proof  of  our  rule.  In  a  bad  age,  the  fate  of  the  public  is 
to  be  robbed.  In  a  good  age,  it  is  much  milder — merely 
to  have  the  dearest  and  the  worst  of  every  thing. 

Buildings  for  state  purposes  the  state  must  erect.  And 
here  we  think  that,  in  general,  the  state  ought  to  stop. 
We  firmly  believe,  that  five  hundred  thousand  pounds  sub- 
scribed by  individuals  for  railroads  or  canals  would  pro- 
duce more  advantage  to  the  public,  than  five  millions  voted 
by  Parliament  for  the  same  purpose.  There  are  certain 
old  saws  about  the  master's  eye,  and  about  everybody's 
business,  in  which  we  place  very  great  faith. 

There  is,  we  have  said,  no  consistency  in  Mr.  Southey's 
political  system.  But  if  there  be  in  it  any  leading  principle, 
if  there  be  any  one  error  which  diverges  more  widely  and 
variously  than  any  other,  it  is  that  of  which  his  theory  about 
national  works  is  a  ramification.  He  conceives  that  the 
business  of  the  magistrate  is,  not  merely  to  see  that  the  per- 
sons and  property  of  the  people  are  secure  from  attack,  but 
that  he  ought  to  be  a  perfect  jack  of  all  trades,  architect, 
engineer,  schoolmaster,  merchant,  theologian,  a  Lady  Bounti- 
ful in  every  parish,  a  Paul  Pry  in  every  house,  spying,  eaves- 
dropping, relieving,  admonishing,  spending  our  money  for 
us,  and  choosing  our  opinions  for  us.  His  principle  is,  if 
we  understand  it  rightly,  that  no  man  can  do  any  thing  so 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  297 

well  for  himself,  as  his  rulers,  be  they  who  they  may,  can 
do  it  for  him;  that  a  government  approaches  nearer  and 
nearer  to  perfection,  in  proportion  as  it  interferes  more  and 
more  with  the  habits  and  notions  of  individuals. 

He  seems  to  be  fully  convinced,  that  it  is  in  the  power  of 
government  to  relieve  the  distresses  under  which  the  lower 
orders  labour.  Nay,  he  considers  doubt  on  this  subject  as 
impious.  We  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  his  argument  on 
this  subject.     It  is  a  perfect  jewel  of  logic. 

'^Many  thousands  in  your  metropolis,^^  says  Sir  Thomas 
More,  ''rise  every  morning  without  knowing  how  they  are 
to  subsist  during  the  day ;  as  many  of  them,  where  they  are 
to  lay  their  heads  at  night.  All  men,  even  the  vicious  them- 
selves, know  that  wickedness  leads  to  misery ;  but  many, 
even  among  the  good  and  the  wise,  have  yet  to  learn  that 
misery  is  almost  as  often  the  cause  of  wickedness." 

''There  are  many,'^  says  Montesinos,  "who  know  this, 
but  believe  that  it  is  not  in  the  power  of  human  institutions 
to  prevent  this  misery.  They  see  the  effect,  but  regard  the 
causes  as  inseparable  from  the  condition  of  human  nature." 

"As  surely  as  Grod  is  good,"  replies  Sir  Thomas,  "so 
surely  there  is  no  such  thing  as  necessary  evil.  For,  by  the 
religious  mind,  sickness,  and  pain,  and  death  are  not  to  be 
accounted  evils." 

Now,  if  sickness,  pain,  and  death  are  not  evils,  we  cannot 
understand  why  it  should  be  an  evil  that  thousands  should 
rise  without  knowing  how  they  are  to  subsist.  The  only 
evil  of  hunger  is,  that  it  produces  first  pain,  then  sickness, 
and  finally  death.  If  it  did  not  produce  these,  it  would  be 
no  calamity.  If  these  are  not  evils,  it  is  no  calamity.  We 
cannot  conceive  why  it  should  be  a  greater  impeachment  of 
the  Divine  goodness,  that  some  men  should  not  be  able 
to  find  food  to  eat,  than  that  others  should  have  stomachs 
which  derive  no  nourishment  from  food  when  they  have 
eaten  it.  Whatever  physical  effects  want  produces  may 
also  be  produced  by  disease.  Whatever  salutary  effects 
disease  may  produce  may  also  be  produced  by  want.  If 
poverty  makes  men  thieves,  disease  and  pain  often  sour  the 
temper  and  contract  the  heart. 

We  will  propose  a  very  plain  dilemma  :  Either  physical 
pain  is  an  evil,  or  it  is  not  an  evil.     If  it  is  an  evil,  then 


2.98 

there  is  necessary  evil  in  the  universe :  if  it  is  not,  why 
should  the  poor  be  delivered  from  it  ? 

Mr.  Southej  entertains  as  exaggerated  a  notion  of  the 
wisdom  of  governments  as  of  their  power.  He  speaks  with 
the  greatest  disgust  of  the  respect  now  paid  to  public  opinion. 
That  opinion  is,  according  to  him,  to  be  distrusted  and 
dreaded;  its  usurpation  ought  to  be  vigorously  resisted; 
and  the  practice  of  yielding  to  it  is  likely  to  ruin  the  coun- 
try. To  maintain  police  is,  according  to  him,  only  one  of 
the  ends  of  government.  Its  duties  are  patriarchal  and 
paternal.  It  ought  to  consider  the  moral  discipline  of  the 
people  as  its  first  object,  to  establish  a  religion,  to  train  the 
whole  community  in  that  religion,  and  to  consider  all  dis- 
senters as  its  own  enemies. 

"  Nothing,^'  says  Sir  Thomas,  ^^  is  more  certain  than  that 
religion  is  the  basis  upon  which  civil  government  rests ;  that 
from  religion  power  derives  its  authority,  laws  their  eflicacy, 
and  both  their  zeal  and  sanction ;  and  it  is  necessary  that 
this  religion  be  established  for  the  security  of  the  state  and 
for  the  welfare  of  the  people,  who  would  otherwise  be  moved 
to  and  fro  with  every  wind  of  doctrine.  A  state  is  secure 
in  proportion  as  the  people  are  attached  to  its  institutions ; 
it  is,  therefore,  the  first  and  plainest  rule  of  sound  policy, 
that  the  people  be  trained  up  in  the  way  they  should  go. 
The  state  that  neglects  this  prepares  its  own  destruction ; 
and  they  that  train  them  in  any  other  way  are  undermining 
it.  Nothing  in  abstract  science  can  be  more  certain  than 
these  positions  are." 

'^All  ofwhich,^'  answers  Montesinos,  ^' are  nevertheless 
denied  by  our  professors  of  the  arts  Babblative  and  Scrib- 
blative,  some  in  the  audacity  of  evil  designs,  and  others  in 
the  glorious  assurance  of  impenetrable  ignorance.'' 

The  greater  part  of  the  two  volumes  before  us  is  merely 
an  amplification  of  these  absurd  paragraphs.  What  does 
Mr.  Southey  mean  by  saying  that  religion  is  demonstrably 
the  basis  of  civil  government  ?  He  cannot  surely  mean  that 
men  have  no  motives,  except  those  derived  from  religion, 
for  establishing  and  supporting  civil  government,  that  no 
temporal  advantage  is  derived  from  civil  government,  that 
man  would  experience  no  temporal  inconvenience  from, 
living  in  a  state  of  anarchy  ?     If  he  allows,  as  we  think  he 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  299 

must  allow,  that  it  is  for  the  good  of  mankind  in  this  world 
to  have  civil  government,  and  that  the  great  majority  of 
mankind  have  always  thought  it  for  their  good  in  this  world 
to  have  civil  government,  we  then  have  a  basis  for  govern- 
ment quite  distinct  from  religion.  It  is  true,  that  the  Chris- 
tian religion  sanctions  government,  as  it  sanctions  every 
thing  which  promotes  the  happiness  and  virtue  of  our  species. 
But  we  are  at  a  loss  to  conceive  in  what  sense  religion  can 
be  said  to  be  the  basis  of  government,  in  which  it  is  not  also 
the  basis  of  the  practices  of  eating,  drinking,  and  lighting 
fires  in  cold  weather.  Nothing  in  history  is  more  certain 
than  that  government  has  existed,  has  received  some  obedi- 
ence and  given  some  protection,  in  times  in  which  it  derived 
no  support  from  religion,  in  times  in  which  there  was  no 
religion  that  influenced  the  hearts  and  lives  of  men.  It  was 
not  from  dread  of  Tartarus,  or  belief  in  the  Elysian  fields, 
that  an  Athenian  wished  to  have  some  institutions  which 
might  keep  Orestes  from  filching  his  cloak,  or  Midias  from 
breaking  his  head.  ^^  It  is  from  religion,"  says  Mr.  Southey, 
^'that  power  derives  its  authority,  and  laws  their  efficacy.^' 
From  what  religion  does  our  power  over  the  Hindoos  derive 
its  authority,  or  the  law  in  virtue  of  which  we  hang  Brah- 
mins, its  ef&cacy?  For  thousands  of  years  civil  government 
has  existed  in  almost  every  corner  of  the  world,  in  ages  of 
priestcraft,  in  ages  of  fanaticism,  in  ages  of  epicurean  in- 
difi"erence,'  in  ages  of  enlightened  piety.  However  pure  or 
impure  the  faith  of  the  people  might  be,  whether  they  adored 
a  beneficent  or  malignant  power,  whether  they  thought  the 
soul  mortal  or  immortal,  they  have,  as  soon  as  they  ceased 
to  be  absolute  savages,  found  out  their  need  of  civil  govern- 
ment, and  instituted  it  accordingly.  It  is  as  universal  as 
the  practice  of  cookery.  Yet,  it  is  as  certain,  says  Mr. 
Southey,  as  any  thing  in  abstract  science,  that  government 
is  founded  on  religion.  We  should  like  to  know  what 
notion  Mr.  Southey  has  of  the  demonstrations  of  abstract 
science :  but  a  vague  one,  we  suspect. 

The  proof  proceeds.  As  religion  is  the  basis  of  govern- 
ment, and  as  the  state  is  secure  in  proportion  as  the  people 
are  attached  to  its  institutions,  it  is,  therefore,  says  Mr. 
Southey,  the  first  rule  of  policy,  that  the  government  should 
train  the  people  in  the  way  in  which  they  should  go;  and 


300         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

it  is  plain,  that  those  who  train  them  in  any  other  way,  are 
undermining  the  state. 

Now  it  does  not  appear  to  us  to  be  the  first  object,  that 
people  should  always  believe  in  the  established  religion,  and 
be  attached  to  the  established  government.  A  religion  may 
be  false.  A  government  may  be  oppressive.  And  whatever 
support  government  gives  to  false  religions,  or  religion  to 
oppressive  governments,  we  consider  as  a  clear  evil. 

The  maxim,  that  governments  ought  to  train  the  people 
in  the  way  in  which  they  should  go,  sounds  well.  But  is  there 
any  reason  for  believing  that  a  government  is  more  likely  to 
lead  the  people  in  the  right  way,  than  the  people  to  fall  into 
the  right  way  of  themselves  ?  Have  there  not  been  govern- 
ments which  were  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  ?  Are  there  not 
still  such  governments?  Can  it  be  laid  down  as  a  general 
rule  that  the  movement  of  political  and  religious  truth  is 
rather  downwards  from  the  government  to  the  people,  than 
upwards  from  the  people  to  the  government?  These  are 
questions  which  it  is  of  importance  to  have  clearly  resolved. 
Mr.  Southey  declaims  against  public  opinion,  which  is  now, 
he  tells  us,  usurping  supreme  power.  Formerly,  according 
to  him,  the  laws  governed;  now  public  opinion  governs. 
"What  are  laws  but  expressions  of  the  opinion  of  some  class 
which  has  power  over  the  rest  of  the  community?  By  what 
was  the  world  ever  governed,  but  by  the  opinion  of  some 
person  or  persons  ?  By  what  else  can  it  ever  be  governed  ? 
What  are  all  systems,  religious,  political,  or  scientific,  but 
opinions  resting  on  evidence  more  or  less  satisfiictory  ? 
The  question  is  not  between  human  opinion  and  some 
higher  and  more  certain  mode  of  arriving  at  truth,  but  be- 
tween opinion  and  opinion,  between  the  opinion  of  one  man 
and  another,  or  of  one  class  and  another,  or  of  one  generation 
and  another.  Public  opinion  is  not  infallible ;  but  can  Mr. 
Southey  construct  any  institutions  which  shall  secure  to 
us  the -guidance  of  an  infallible  opinion  ?  Can  Mr.  Southey 
select  any  family,  any  profession,  any  class,  in  short,  distin- 
guished by  any  plain  badge  from  the  rest  of  the  community, 
whose  opinion  is  more  likely  to  be  just  than  this  much  abused 
public  opinion  ?  Would  he  choose  the  peers,  for  example  ? 
Or  the  two  hundred  tallest  men  in  the  country  ?  Or  the  poor 
Knights  of  Windsor  ?     Or  children  who  are  born  with  cauls, 


SOUTHEY'fe   COLLOQUIES   ON    SOCIETY.  301 

seventh  sons  of  seTenth  sons  ?  We  cannot  suppose  that  he 
would  recommend  popular  election ;  for  that  is  merely  an  ap- 
peal to  public  opinion.  And  to  say  that  society  ought  to  be 
governed  by  the  opinion  of  the  wisest  and  best,  though  true, 
is  useless.  Whose  opinion  is  to  decide,  who  are  the  wisest 
and  best? 

Mr.  Southey  and  many  other  respectable  people  seem  to 
think  that  when  they  have  once  proved  the  moral  and  reli- 
gious training  of  the  people  to  be  a  most  important  object, 
it  follows  of  course  that  it  is  an  objoct  which  the  govern- 
ment ought  to  pursue.  They  forget  that  we  have  to  con- 
sider, not  merely  the  goodness  of  the  end,  but  also  the  fit- 
ness of  the  means.  Neither  in  the  natural  nor  in  the  political 
body  have  all  members  the  same  office.  There  is  surely  no 
contradiction  in  saying  that  a  certain  section  of  the  com- 
munity may  be  quite  competent  to  protect  the  persons  and 
property  of  the  rest,  yet  quite  unfit  to  direct  our  opinions 
or  to  superintend  our  private  habits. 

So  strong  is  the  interest  of  a  ruler  to  protect  his  subjects 
against  all  depredations  and  outrages  except  his  own,  so 
clear  and  simple  are  the  means  by  which  this  end  is  to  be 
efiected,  that  men  are  probably  better  off  under  the  worst 
governments  in  the  world,  than  they  would  be  in  a  state  of 
anarchy.  Even  when  the  appointment  of  magistrates  has 
been  left  to  chance,  as  in  the  Italian  Kepublics,  things  have 
gone  on  better  than  they  would  have  done  if  there  had  been 
no  magistrates  at  all,  and  every  man  had  done  what  seemed 
right  in  his  own  eyes.  But  we  see  no  reason  for  thinking 
that  the  opinions  of  the  magistrate  are  more  likely  to  be 
right  than  those  of  any  other  man.  None  of  the  modes  by 
which  rulers  are  appointed,  popular  election,  the  accident  of 
the  lot,  or  the  accident  of  birth,  afford,  as  far  as  we  can 
perceive,  much  security  for  their  being  wiser  than  any  of 
their  neighbours.  The  chance  of  their  being  wiser  than  all 
their  neighbours  together  is  still  smaller.  Now  we  cannot 
conceive  how  it  can  be  laid  down,  that  it  is  the  duty  and  the 
right  of  one  class  to  direct  the  opinions  of  another,  unless 
it  can  be  proved  that  the  former  class  is  more  likely  to  form 
just  opinions  than  the  latter. 

The  duties  of  government  would  be,  as  Mr.  Southey  says 
that  they  are,  paternal,  if  a  government  were  necessarily  as 

Vol.  L— 26 


302         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

mucli  superior  in  wisdom  to  a  people,  as  the  most  foolish 
father,  for  a  time,  is  to  the  most  intelligent  child,  and  if  a 
government  loved  a  people  as  fathers  generally  love  their 
children.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  a  govern- 
ment will  either  have  the  paternal  warmth  of  affection,  or 
the  paternal  superiority  of  intellect.  Mr.  Southey  might  as 
well  say,  that  the  duties  of  the  shoemaker  are  paternal,  and 
that  it  is  a  usurpation  in  any  man  not  of  the  craft  to  say 
that  his  shoes  are  had,  and  to  insist  on  having  better.  The 
division  of  labour  would  be  no  blessing,  if  those/  by  whom  a 
thing  is  done  were  to  pay  no  attention  to  the  opinion  of 
those  for  whom  it  is  done.  The  shoemaker,  in  the  Relapse, 
tells  Lord  Foppington,  that  his  lordship  is  mistaken  in  sup- 
posing that  his  shoe  pinches.  "  It  does  not  pinch,  it  cannot 
pinch ;  I  know  my  business,  and  I  never  made  a  better  shoe." 
This  is  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Southey  would  have  a  govern- 
ment treat  a  people  who  usurp  the  privilege  of  thinking. 
Nay,  the  shoemaker  of  Yanbrugh  has  the  advantage  in  the 
comparison.  He  contented  himself  with  regulating  his  cus- 
tomer's shoes,  about  which  he  knew  something,  and  did  not 
presume  to  dictate  about  the  coat  and  hat.  But  Mr.  Southey 
would  have  the  rulers  of  a  country  prescribe  opinions  to 
the  people,  not  only  about  politics,  but  about  matters  con- 
cerning which  a  government  has  no  peculiar  sources  of 
information,  concerning  which  any  man  in  the  streets  may 
know  as  much,  and  think  as  justly,  as  a  king — religion  and 
morals. 

Men  are  never  so  likely  to  settle  a  question  rightly,  as 
when  they  discuss  it  freely.  A  government  can  interfere  in 
discussion  only  by  making  it  less  free  than  it  would  other- 
wise be.  Men  are  most  likely  to  form  just  opinions,  when 
they  have  no  other  wish  than  to  know  the  truth,  and  are 
exempt  from  all  influence,  either  of  hope  or  fear.  Grovern- 
ment,  as  government,  can  bring  nothing  but  the  influence 
of  hopes  and  fears  to  support  its  doctrines.  It  carries  on 
controversy,  not  with  reasons,  but  with  threats  and  bribes. 
If  it  employs  reasons,  it  does  so  not  in  virtue  of  any 
powers  which  belong  to  it  as  a  government.  Thus,  instead 
of  a  contest  between  argument  and  argument,  we  have  a 
contest  between  argument  and  force.  Instead  of  a  con- 
test in  which  truth,  from  the  natural  constitution  of  the 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  303 

human  mind,  has  a  decided  advantage  over  falsehood,  we 
have  a  contest  in  which  truth  can  be  victorious  only  by 
accident. 

And  what,  after  all,  is  the  security  which  this  training 
gives  to  governments  ?  Mr,  Southey  would  scarcely  recom- 
mend, that  discussion  should  be  more  effectually  shackled, 
that  public  opinion  should  he  more  strictly  disciplined  into 
conformity  with  established  institutions,  than  in  Spain  and 
Italy.  Yet  we  know  that  the  restraints  which  exist  in  Spain 
and  Italy  have  not  prevented  atheism  from  spreading  among 
the  educated  classes,  and  especially  among  those  whose 
office  it  is  to  minister  at  the  altars  of  God.  All  our  readers 
know  how,  at  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution,  pnest  after 
priest  came  forward  to  declare  that  his  doctrine,  his  min- 
istry, his  whole  life,  had  been  a  lie,  a  mummery  during 
which  he  could  scarcely  compose  his  countenance  sufficiently 
to  carry  on  the  imposture.  This  was  the  case  of  a  false,  or 
at  least  a  grossly  corrupted,  religion.  Let  us  take,  then,  the 
case  of  all  others  the  most  favourable  to  Mr.  Southey's 
argument.  Let  us  take  that  form  of  religion  which  he  holds 
to  be  the  purest,  the  system  of  the  Arminian  part  of  the 
Church  of  England.  Let  us  take  the  form  of  government 
which  he  most  admires  and  regrets,  the  government  of  Eng- 
land in  the  time  of  Charles  the  First.  Would  he  wish  to 
see  a  closer  connection  between  church  and  state  than  then 
existed  ?  Would  he  wish  for  more  powerful  ecclesiastical 
tribunals  ?  for  a  more  zealous  king  ?  for  a  more  active  pri- 
mate ?  Would  he  wish  to  see  a  more  complete  monopoly 
of  public  instruction  given  to  the  Established  Church  ? 
Could  any  government  do  more  to  train  the  people  in  the 
way  in  which  he  would  have  them  go  ?  And  in  what  did 
all  this  training  end  ?  The  Report  of  the  state  of  the  Pro- 
vince of  Canterbury,  delivered  by  Laud  to  his  Master  at  the 
close  of  1639,  represents  the  Church  of  England  as  in  the 
highest  and  most  palmy  state.  So  effectually  had  the  govern- 
ment pursued  that  policy  which  Mr,  Southey  wishes  to  see 
revived,  that  there  was  scarcely  the  least  appearance  of  dis- 
sent. Most  of  the  bishops  stated  that  all  was  well  among 
their  flocks.  Seven  or  eight  persons  of  the  diocese  of  Peter- 
borough had  seemed  refractory  to  the  church,  but  had  made 
ample  submission.     In  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  all  whom  therd 


304         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

had  been  reason  to  suspect,  had  made  profession  of  conform- 
ity, and  appeared  to  observe  it  strictly.  It  is  confessed 
that  there  was  a  little  difficulty  in  bringing  some  of  the 
vulgar  in  Suffolk  to  take  the  sacrament  at  the  rails  in  the 
chancel.  This  is  the  only  open  instance  of  non-conformity 
which  the  vigilant  eye  of  Laud  could  find  in  all  the  dioceses 
of  his  twenty-one  suffragans,  on  the  very  eve  of  a  revolu- 
tion, in  which  primate  and  church,  and  monarch  and  mon- 
archy, were  to  perish  together. 

At  which  time  would  Mr.  Southey  pronounce  the  consti- 
tution more  secure ;  in  1639,  when  Laud  presented  this  re- 
port to  Charles,  or  now,  when  thousands  of  meetings  openly 
collect  millions  of  dissenters,  when  designs  against  the  tithes 
are  openly  avowed,  when  books  attacking  not  only  the  Es- 
tablishment, but  the  first  principles  of  Christianity,  are  openly 
sold  in  the  streets  ?  The  signs  of  discontent,  he  tells  us, 
are  stronger  in  England  now,  than  in  France  when  the 
States-General  met ;  and  hence  he  would  have  us  infer  that 
a  revolution  like  that  of  France  may  be  at  hand.  Does  he 
not  know  that  the  danger  of  states  is  to  be  estimated,  not  by 
what  breaks  out  of  the  public  mind,  but  by  what  stays  in  it  ? 
Can  he  conceive  any  thing  more  terrible  than  the  situation  of 
a  government  which  rules  without  apprehension  over  a  peo- 
ple of  hypocrites ;  which  is  flattered  by  the  press  and  carsed 
in  the  inner  chambers ;  which  exults  in  the  attachment  and 
obedience  of  its  subjects,  and  knows  not  that  those  subjects 
are  leagued  against  it  in  a  freemasonry  of  hatred,  the  sign  of 
which  is  every  day  conveyed  in  the  glance  of  ten  thousand 
eyes,  the  pressure  of  ten  thousand  hands,  and  the  tone  of  ten 
thousand  voices  ?  Profound  and  ingenious  policy  !  Instead 
of  curing  the  disease,  to  remove  those  symptoms  by  which 
alone  its  nature  can  be  known  !  To  leave  the  serpent  his 
deadly  sting,  and  deprive  him  only  of  his  warning  rattle  ! 

When  the  people  whom  Charles  had  so  assiduously  trained 
in  the  good  way  had  rewarded  his  paternal  care  by  cutting 
off  his  head,  a  new  kind  of  training  came  into  fashion. 
Another  government  arose,  which,  like  the  former,  consi- 
dered religion  as  its  surest  basis,  and  the  religious  discipline 
of  the  people  as  its  first  duty.  Sanguinary  laws  were  enacted 
against  libertinism ;  profane  pictures  were  burned ;  drapery 
was  put  on  indecorous  statues ;  the  theatres  were  shut  up  ' 


sou  THEY  S   COLLOQUIES   ON   SOCIETY.  805 

fast-days  were  numerous ',  and  the  Parliament  resolved  that 
no  person  should  be  admitted  into  any  public  employment, 
unless  the  House  should  be  first  satisfied  of  his  vital  godli- 
ness. We  know  what  was  the  end  of  this  training,  "We 
know  that  it  ended  in  impiety,  in  filthy  and  heartless  sensu- 
ality, in  the  dissolution  of  all  ties  of  honour  and  morality. 
We  know  that  at  this  very  day  scriptural  phrases,  scriptural 
names,  perhaps  some  scriptural  doctrines,  excite  disgust  and 
ridicule,  solely  because  they  are  associated  with  the  austerity 
of  that  period. 

Thus  has  the  experiment  of  training  the  people  in  esta- 
blished forms. of  religion  been  twice  tried  in  England  on  a 
large  scale ;  once  by  Charles  and  Laud,  and  once  by  the 
Puritans.  The  High  Tories  of  our  time  still  entertain  many 
of  the  feelings  and  opinions  of  Charles  and  Laud,  though  in 
a  mitigated  form ;  nor  is  it  difficult  to  see  that  the  heirs  of 
the  Puritans  are  still  amongst  us.  It  would  be  desirable 
that  each  of  these  parties  should  remember  how  little  advan- 
tage or  honour  it  formerly  derived  from  the  closest  alliance 
with  power ;  that  it  fell  by  the  support  of  rulers,  and  rose 
by  their  opposition ;  that  of  the  two  systems,  that  in  which 
the  people  were  at  any  time  being  drilled  was  always  at  that 
time  the  unpopular  system ;  that  the  training  of  the  High 
Church  ended  in  the  reign  of  the  Puritans,  and  the  training 
of  the  Puritans  in  the  reign  of  the  harlots. 

This  was  quite  natural.  Nothing  is  so  galling  and  detest- 
able to  a  people  not  broken  in  from  the  birth,  as  a  paternal, 
or,  in  other  words,  a  meddling  government — a  government 
which  tells  them  what  to  read,  and  say,  and  eat,  and  drink, 
and  wear.  Our  fathers  could  not  bear  it  two  hundred  years 
ago ;  and  we  are  not  more  patient  than  they.  Mr.  Southey 
thinks  that  the  yoke  of  the  church  is  dropping  ofi^,  because  it 
is  loose.  We  feel  convinced  that  it  is  borne  only  because  it  is 
easy,  and  that,  in  the  instant  in  which  an  attempt  is  made  to 
tighten  it,  it  will  be  flung  away.  It  will  be  neither  the  first 
nor  the  strongest  yoke  that  has  been  broken  asunder  and 
trampled  under  foot  in  the  day  of  the  vengeance  of  England. 

How  far  Mr.  Southey  would  have  the  government  carry 
its  measures  for  training  the  people  in  the  doctrines  of  the 
church,  we  are  unable  to  discover.     In  one  passage  Sir 
Thomas  More  asks  with  great  vehemence, 
26* 


306         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

"  Is  it  possible  that  your  laws  should  suffer  the  unbeliev- 
ers to  exist  as  a  party  ? 

"  Vetitum  est  adeo  sceleris  nihil  ?" 

Montesinos  answers.  ^'  They  avow  themselves  in  defiance 
of  the  laws.  The  fashionable  doctrine  which  the  press  at 
this  time  maintains  is,  that  this  is  a  matter  in  which  the 
laws  ought  not  to  interfere,  every  man  having  a  right,  both 
to  form  what  opinion  he  pleases  upon  religious  subjects,  and 
to  promulgate  that  opinion." 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  Mr.  Southey  would  not  give 
full  and  perfect  toleration  to  infidelity.  In  another  passage, 
however,  he  observes  with  some  truth,  though  too  sweep- 
ingly,  that  ^^  any  degree  of  intolerance,  short  of  that  full  ex- 
tent which  the  Papal  chiu'ch  exercises  where  it  has  the 
power,  acts  upon  the  opinions  which  it  is  intended  to  sup- 
press, like  pruning  upon  vigorous  plants,  they  grow  the 
stronger  for  it.''  These  two  passages,  put  together,  would 
lead  us  to  the  conclusion  that,  in  Mr.  Southey's  opinion,  the 
utmost  severity  ever  employed  by  the  Roman  Catholic 
church  in  the  days  of  its  greatest  power,  ought  to  be  em- 
ployed against  unbelievers  in  England ;  in  plain  words,  that 
Carlile  and  his  shopmen  ought  to  be  burned  in  Smithfield, 
and  that  every  person  who,  when  called  upon,  should  decline 
to  make  a  solemn  profession  of  Christianity,  ought  to  suffer 
the  same  fate.  We  do  not,  however,  believe  that  Mr. 
Southey  would  recommend  such  a  course,  though  his  lan- 
guage would,  in  the  case  of  any  other  writer,  justify  us  in 
supposing  this  to  be  his  meaning.  His  opinions  form  no 
system  at  all.  He  never  sees,  at  one  glance,  more  of  a 
question  than  will  furnish  matter  for  one  flowing  and  well- 
turned  sentence ;  so  that  it  would  be  the  height  of  unfair- 
ness to  charge  him  personally  with  holding  a  doctrine,  merely 
because  that  doctrine  is  deducible,  though  by  the  closest 
and  most  accurate  reasoning,  from  the  premises  which  he 
has  laid  down.  We  are,  therefore,  left  completely  in  the 
dark  as  to  Mr.  Southey's  opinion  about  toleration.  Im- 
mediately after  censuring  the  government  for  not  punish- 
ing infidels,  he  proceeds  to  discuss  the  question  of  the  Ca- 
tholic disabilities,  now,  thank  God,  removed,  and  defends 
them  on  the  ground  that  the  Catholic  doctrines  tend  to 


SOUTHEY^S   COLLOQUIES  ON   SOCIETY.  307 

persecution,  and  that  the  Catholics  persecuted  when  they 
had  power. 

^'  They  must  persecute/^  says  he,  ^'  if  they  believe  their 
own  creed,  for  conscience'  sake;  and  if  they  do  not  believe 
it,  they  must  persecute  for  policy;  because  it  is  only  by 
intolerance  that  so  corrupt  and  injurious  a  system  can  be 
upheld/^ 

That  unbelievers  should  not  be  persecuted,  is  an  instance 
of  national  depravity  at  which  the  glorified  spirit  stands 
aghast.  Yet  a  sect  of  Christians  is  to  be  excluded  from 
power,  because  those  who  formerly  held  the  same  opinions 
were  guilty  of  persecution.  We  have  said  that  we  do  not 
very  well  know  what  Mr.  Southey's  opinion  about  toleration 
is.  But,  on  the  whole,  we  take  it  to  be  this,  that  everybody 
is  to  tolerate  him,  and  that  he  is  to  tolerate  nobody. 

We  will  not  be  deterred  by  any  fear  of  misrepresentation 
from  expressing  our  hearty  approbation  of  the  mild,  wise, 
and  eminently  Christian  manner,  in  which  the  church  and 
the  government  have  lately  acted  with  respect  to  blasphe- 
mous publications.  We  praise  them  for  not  having  thought 
it  necessary  to  encircle  a  religion  pure,  merciful,  and  philo- 
sophical— a  religion,  to  the  evidences  of  which  the  highest 
intellects  have  yielded— with  the  defences  of  a  false  and 
bloody  superstition.  The  ark  of  God  was  never  taken  till 
it  was  surrounded  by  the  arms  of  earthly  defenders.  In 
captivity,  its  sanctity  was  sufficient  to  vindicate  it  from  in- 
sult, and  to  lay  the  hostile  fiend  prostrate  on  the  threshold 
of  his  own  temple.  The  real  security  of  Christianity  is  to 
be  found  in  its  benevolent  morality,  in  its  exquisite  adapta- 
tion to  the  human  heart,  in  the  facility  with  which  its  scheme 
accommodates  itself  to  the  capacity  of  every  human  intel- 
lect, in  the  consolation  which  it  bears  to  the  house  of  mourn- 
ing, in  the  light  with  which  it  brightens  the  great  mystery 
of  the  grave.  To  such  a  system  it  can  bring  no  addition  of 
dignity  or  of  strength,  that  it  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  com- 
mon law.  It  is  not  now  for  the  first  time  left  to  v<i\j  on 
the  force  of  its  own  evidences  and  the  attractions  of  its  own 
beauty.  Its  sublime  theology  confounded  the  Grecian 
schools  in  the  fair  conflict  of  reason  with  reason.  The  bravest 
and  wisest  of  the  Caesars  found  their  arms  and  their  policy 
unavailing  when  opposed  to  the  weapons  that  were  not 


308         macatjlay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

carnal,  and  the  kingdom  that  was  not  of  this  world.  The 
victory  which  Porphyry  and  Diocletian  failed  to  gain  is  not, 
to  all  appearance,  reserved  for  any  of  those  who  have  in  this 
age  directed  their  attacks  against  the  last  restraint  of  the 
powerful,  and  the  last  hope  of  the  wretched.  The  whole 
history  of  the  Christian  religion  shows  that  she  is  in  far 
greater  danger  of  being  corrupted  by  the  alliance  of  power, 
than  of  being  crushed  by  its  opposition.  Those  who  thrust 
temporal  sovereignty  upon  her,  treat  her  as  their  prototypes 
treated  her  author.  They  bow  the  knee  and  spit  upon  her; 
they  cry  Hail  I  and  smite  her  on  the  cheek;  they  put  a  scep- 
tre into  her  hand,  but  it  is  a  fragile  reed ;  they  crown  her, 
but  it  is  with  thorns ;  they  cover  with  purple  the  wounds 
which  their  own  hands  have  inflicted  on  her;  and  inscribe 
magnificent  titles  over  the  cross  on  which  they  have  fixed 
her  to  perish  in  ignominy  and  pain. 

The  general  view  which  Mr.  Southey  takes  of  the  pros- 
pects of  society  is  very  gloomy;  but  we  comfort  ourselves 
with  the  consideration  that  Mr.  Southey  is  no  prophet.  He 
foretold,  we  remember,  on  the  very  eve  of  the  abolition  of 
the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts,  that  these  hateful  laws  were 
immortal,  and  that  pious  minds  would  long  be  gratified  by 
seeing  the  most  solemn  religious  rite  of  the  church  profaned, 
for  the  purpose  of  upholding  her  political  supremacy.  In 
the  book  before  us,  he  says  that  Catholics  cannot  possibly 
be  admitted  into  Parliament  until  those  whom  Johnson 
called  ^^  the  bottomless  Whigs'^  come  into  power.  While 
the  book  was  in  the  press,  the  prophecy  was  falsified,  and  a 
Tory  of  the  Tories,  Mr.  Southey' s  own  favourite  hero,  won 
and  wore  that  noblest  wreath,  ^'  Oh  cives  servatosJ' 

The  signs  of  the  times,  Mr.  Southey  tells  us,  are  very 
threatening.  His  fears  for  the  country  would  decidedly 
preponderate  over  his  hopes,  but  for  his  firm  reliance  on  the 
mercy  of  G-od.  Now,  as  we  know  that  God  has  once  suffered 
the  civilized  world  to  be  overrun  by  savages,  and  the  Chris- 
tian religion  to  be  corrupted  by  doctrines  which  made  it,  for 
some  ages,  almost  as  bad  as  Paganism,  we  cannot  think  it 
inconsistent  with  his  attributes  that  similar  calamities  should 
again  befall  mankind. 

We  look,  however,  on  the  state  of  the  world,  and  of  this 
kingdom  in  particular,  with  much  greater  satisfaction,  and 


SOUTHEY^S   COLLOQUIES   ON   BOCIETY.  309 

with  better  hopes.  Mr.  Southey  speaks  with  contempt  of 
those  who  think  the  savage  state  happier  than  the  social. 
On  this  subject,  he  says,  Rousseau  never  imposed  on  him, 
even  in  his  youth.  But  he  conceives  that  a  community 
which  has  advanced  a  little  way  in  civilization  is  happier 
than  one  which  has  made  greater  progress.  The  Britons 
in  the  time  of  Caesar  were  happier,  he  suspects,  than  the 
English  of  the  nineteenth  century.  On  the  whole,  he  selects 
the  generation  which  preceded  the  Reformation,  as  that  in 
which  the  people  of  this  country  were  better  off  than  at  any 
time  before  or  since. 

This  opinion  rests  on  nothing,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  except 
his  own  inu'vidual  associations.  He  is  a  man  of  letters; 
and  a  life  destitute  of  literary  pleasures  seems  insipid  to  him. 
He  abhors  the  spirit  of  the  present  generation,  the  severity 
of  its  studies,  the  boldness  of  its  inquiries,  and  the  disdain 
with  which  it  regards  some  old  prejudices  by  which  his  own 
mind  is  held  in  bondage.  He  dislikes  an  utterly  unenlight- 
ened age;  he  dislikes  an  investigating  and  reforming  age. 
The  fii'st  twenty  years  of  the  sixteenth  century  would  have 
exactly  suited  him.  They  furnished  just  the  quantity  of 
intellectual  excitement  which  he  requires.  The  learned  few 
read  and  wrote  largely.  A  scholar  was  held  in  high  esti- 
mation, but  the  rabble  did  not  presume  to  think ',  and  even 
the  most  inquiring  and  independent  of  the  educated  classes 
paid  more  reverence  to  authority  and  less  to  reason,  than  is 
usual  in  our  time.  This  is  a  state  of  things  in  which  Mr. 
Southey  would  have  found  himself  quite  comfortable ;  and, 
accordingly,  he  pronounces  it  the  happiest  state  of  things 
ever  known  in  the  world. 

The  savages  were  wretched,  says  Mr.  Southey )  but  the 
people  in  the  time  of  Sir  Thomas  More  were  happier  than 
either  they  or  we.  Now,  we  think  it  quite  certain  that  we 
have  the  advantage  over  the  contemporaries  of  Sir  Thomas 
More  in  every  point  in  which  they  had  any  advantage  over 
savages. 

Mr.  Southey  does  not  even  pretend  to  n:  aintain  that  the 
people  in  the  sixteenth  century  were  better  lodged  or  clothed 
than  at  present.  He  seems  to  admit  that  in  these  respects 
there  has  been  some  little  improvement.  It  is  indeed  a 
matter  about  which  scarcely  any  doubt  can  exist  in  the  most 


310  MAC AUL ay's   MTSCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

perverse  mind,  that  the  improvements  of  machinery  have 
lowered  the  price  of  manufactured  articles,  and  have  brought 
within  the  reach  of  the  poorest  some  conveniences  which 
Sir  Thomas  More  or  his  master  could  not  have  obtained  at 
any  price. 

The  labouring  classes,  however,  were,  according  to  Mr. 
Southey,  better  fed  three  hundred  years  ago  than  at  present. 
AVe  believe  that  he  is  completely  in  error  on  this  point.  The 
condition  of  servants  in  noble  and  wealthy  families,  and  of 
scholars  at  the  universities,  must  surely  have  been  better  in 
those  times  than  that  of  common  day-labourers;  and  we  are 
sure  that  it  was  not  better  than  that  of  our  work-house  pau- 
pers. From  the  household  book  of  the  Northumberland 
family,  we  find  that  in  one  of  the  greatest  establishments  of 
the  kingdom  the  servants  lived  almost  entirely  on  salt  meat, 
without  any  bread  at  all.  A  more  unwholesome  diet  can 
scarcely  be  conceived.  In  the  reign  of  Edward  the  Sixth, 
the  state  of  the  students  at  Cambridge  is  described  to  us,  on 
the  very  best  authority,  as  most  wretched.  Many  of  them 
dined  on  pottage  made  of  a  farthing's  worth  of  beef  with  a 
little  salt  and  oatmeal,  and  literally  nothing  else.  This 
accouni  we  have  from  a  contemporary  master  of  St.  John's. 
Our  parish  poor  now  eat  wheaten  bread.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  the  labourer  was  glad  to  get  barley,  and  was  often 
forced  to  content  himself  with  poorer  fare.  In  Harrison's 
introduction  to  Holinshed,  we  have  an  account  of  the  state 
of  our  working  population  in  the  ^^  golden  days,''  as  Mr. 
Southey  calls  them,  of  good  Queen  Bess.  ''  The  gentilitie," 
says  he,  "  commonly  provide  themselves  sufficiently  of  wheat 
for  their  own  tables,  whylest  their  household  and  poore 
neighbours  in  some  shires  are  inforced  to  content  themselves 
with  rice  or  barley;  yea,  and  in  time  of  dearth,  many  with 
bread  made  eyther  of  beanes,  peason,  or  otes,  or  of  all  toge- 
ther, and  some  acornes  among.  I  will  not  say  that  this 
extremity  is  oft  so  well  to  be  seen  in  time  of  plentie  as  of 
dearth ;  but  if  I  should  I  could  easily  bring  my  trial ;  for 
albeit  there  be  much  more  grounde  eared  nowe  almost  in 
everye  place  then  hath  beene  of  late  yeares,  yet  such  a  price 
of  corne  continueth  in  each  town  and  markete,  without  any 
just  cause,  that  the  artificer  and  poore  labouring  man  is  not 
able  to  reach  unto  it,  but  is  driven  to  content  himself  with 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  311 

horse-corne ;  I  mean  beanes,  peason,  otes,  tares,  and  lin- 
telles  "  We  should  like  to  see  what  the  effect  would  be,  of 
putting  any  parish  in  England  now  on  allowance  of  ^'horse- 
come/'  The  helotry  of  Mammon  are  not,  m  our  day,  so 
easily  enforced  to  content  themselves  as  the  peasantry  of  that 
happy  period,  as  Mr.  Southey  considers  it,  which  elapsed 
between  the  fall  of  the  feudal  and  the  rise  of  commercial 

^"""Tlfe  people,"  says  Mr.  Southey,  "are  worse  fed  than 
when  they  were  fishers."  And  yet  in  another  place  he  com- 
plains that  they  will  not  eat  fish.  "  They  have  contracted, 
says  he,  "  I  know  not  how,  some  obstinate  prejudice  against 
a  kind  of  food  at  once  wholesome  and  delicate,  and  every- 
where to  be  obtained  cheaply  and  in  abundance,  were  the 
demand  for  it  as  general  as  it  ought  to  be."  It  is  true  that 
the  lower  orders  have  an  obstinate  prejudice  against  hsh; 
but  hunger  has  no  such  obstinate  prejudices.  If  what  was 
formerly  a  common  diet  is  now  eaten  only  in  times  of  severe 
pressure,  the  inference  is  plain.  The  people  must  be  ted 
with  what  they  at  least  think  better  food  than  that  of  their 

ancestors.  ,  .  ,     ,  ^  i  -. 

The  advice  and  medicine  which  the  poorest  labourer  can 
now  obtain,  in  disease  or  after  an  accident,  is  far  superior  to 
what  Henry  the  Eighth  could  have  commanded.     Scarcely 
any  part  of  the  country  is  out  of  the  reach  of  practitioners, 
who  are  probably  not  so  far  inferior  to  Sir  Henry  Halford 
as  they  are  superior  to  Sir  Anthony  Denny.     That  there 
has  been  a  great  improvement  in  this  respect  Mr.  Southey 
allows.     Indeed,  he  could  not  well  have  denied  it.     "  l^ut, 
says  he   ''the  evils  for  which  the  sciences  are  the  palliative 
have  increased  since  the  time  of  the  Druids  in  a  proportion 
that  heavily  outweighs  the  benefit  of  improved  therapeu- 
tics "    We  know  nothing  either  of  the  diseases  or  the  reme- 
dies of  the  Druids;  but  we  are  quite  sure  that  the  improve- 
ment of  medicine  has  far  more  than  kept  pace  with  the 
increase  of  disease  during  the  last  three  centuries.     This  is 
proved  by  the  best  possible  evidence.     The  term  of  human 
life  is  decidedly  longer  in  England  than  in  any  fornier  age, 
respecting  which  we  possess  any  information  on  which  we 
can  rely      All  the  rants  in  the  world  about  picturesque  cot- 
tages and  temples  of  Mammon  will  not  shake  this  argument. 


312         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

No  test  of  the  state  of  society  can  be  named  so  decisive  as 
that  which  is  furnished  by  bills  of  mortality.  That  the  lives 
of  the  people  of  this  country  have  been  gradually  lengthen- 
ing during  the  course  of  several  generations  is  as  certain  as 
any  fact  in  statistics,  and  that  the  lives  of  men  should  be- 
come longer  and  longer,  while  the  physical  condition  during 
life  is  becoming  worse  and  worse,  is  utterly  incredible. 

Let  our  readers  think  over  these  circumstances.  Let  them 
take  into  the  account  the  sweating  sickness  and  the  plague. 
Let  them  take  into  the  account  that  fearful  disease  which 
first  made  its  appearance  in  the  generation  to  which  Mr. 
Southey  assigns  the  palm  of  felicity,  and  raged  through 
Europe  with  a  fury  at  which  the  physician  stood  aghast, 
and  before  which  the  people  were  swept  away  by  thousands. 
Let  them  consider  the  state  of  the  northern  counties,  con- 
stantly the  scene  of  robberies,  rapes,  massacres,  and  confla- 
grations. Let  them  add  to  all  this  the  fact  that  seventy-two 
thousand  persons  suffered  death  by  the  hands  of  the  execu- 
tioner during  the  reign  of  Henry  the  Eighth,  and  judge 
between  the  nineteenth  and  the  sixteenth  century. 

We  do  not  say  that  the  lower  orders  in  England  do  not 
suffer  severe  hardships.  But  in  spite  of  Mr.  Southey's 
assertions,  and  in  spite  of  the  assertions  of  a  class  of  politi- 
cians, who,  differing  from  Mr.  Southey  in  every  other  point, 
agree  with  him  in  this,  we  are  inclined  to  doubt  whether 
they  really  suffer  greater  physical  distress  than  the  labour- 
ing classes  of  the  most  flourishing  countries  of  the  Conti- 
nent. 

It  will  scarcely  be  maintained  that  the  lazzaroni  who 
sleep  under  the  porticos  of  Naples,  or  the  beggars  who  be- 
siege the  convents  of  Spain,  are  in  a  happier  situation  than 
the  English  commonalty.  The  distress  which  has  lately 
been  experienced  in  the  northern  part  of  G-ermany,  one  of 
the  best  governed  and  most  prosperous  districts  of  Europe, 
surpasses,  if  we  have  been  correctly  informed,  any  thing 
which  has  of  late  years  been  known  among  us.  In  Norway 
and  Sweden  the  peasantry  are  constantly  compelled  to  mix 
bark  with  their  bread,  and  even  this  expedient  has  not  always 
preserved  whole  families  and  neighbourhoods  from  perishing 
together  of  famine.  An  experiment  has  lately  been  tried 
in  the  kingdom  of  the  Netherlands,  which  has  been  cited  to 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  313 

prove  the  possibility  of  establishing  agricultural  colonies  on 
the  waste  lands  of  England;  but  which  proves  to  our  minds 
nothing  so  clearly  as  this,  that  the  rate  of  subsistence  to 
which  the  labouring  classes  are  reduced  in  the  Netherlands 
is  miserably  low,  and  very  far  inferior  to  that  of  the  Eng- 
lish paupers.  No  distress  which  the  people  here  have 
endured  for  centuries  approaches  to  that  which  has  been 
felt  by  the  French  in  our  own  time.  The  beginning  of  the 
year  1817  was  a  time  of  great  distress  in  this  island.  But 
the  state  of  the  lowest  classes  here  was  luxury  compared 
with  that  of  the  people  of  France.  We  find,  in  Magendie's 
Journal  de  Physiologie  Experimentale,  a  paper  on  a  point 
of  physiology  connected  with  the  distress  of  that  season. 
It  appears  that  the  inhabitants  of  six  departments,  Aix, 
Jura,  Doubs,  Haute  Saone,  Yosges,  and  Saone  et  Loire, 
were  reduced  first  to  oatmeal  and  potatoes,  and  at  last  to 
nettles,  bean-stalks,  and  other  kind  of  herbage  fit  only  for 
cattle;  that  when  the  next  harvest  enabled  them  to  eat 
barley-bread,  many  of  them  died  from  intemperate  indul- 
gence in  what  they  thought  an  exquisite  repast;  and  that  a 
dropsy  of  a  peculiar  description  was  produced  by  the  hard 
fare  of  the  j^ear.  Dead  bodies  were  found  on  the  roads  and 
in  the  fields.  A  single  surgeon  dissected  six  of  these,  and 
found  the  stomach  shrunk,  and  filled  with  the  unwholesome 
aliments  which  hunger  had  driven  men  to  share  with  beasts. 
Such  extremity  of  distress  as  this  is  never  heard  of  in 
England,  or  even  in  Ireland.  We  are,  on  the  whole,  inclined 
to  think,  though  we  would  speak  with  diffidence  on  a  point 
on  which  it  would  be  rash  to  pronounce  a  positive  judgment 
without  a  much  longer  and  closer  investigation  than  we  have 
bestowed  upon  it,  that  the  labouring  classes  of  this  island, 
though  they  have  their  grievances  and  distresses,  some  pro- 
duced by  their  own  improvidence,  some  by  the  errors  of 
their  rulers,  are  on  the  whole  better  off  as  to  physical  com- , 
forts  than  the  inhabitants  of  any  equally  extensive  district 
of  the  old  world.  On  this  very  account,  suffering  is  more 
acutely  felt  and  more  loudly  bewailed  here  than  elsewhere 
We  must  take  into  the  account  the  liberty  of  discussion, 
and  the  strong  interest  which  the  opponents  of  a  ministry 
always  have  to  exaggerate  the  extent  of  the  public  disasters 
Vol.  I.— 27 


314        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

There  are  many  parts  of  Europe  in  which  the  peopla 
quietly  endure  distress  that  here  would  shake  the  founda- 
tions of  the  state ;  in  which  the  inhabitants  of  a  whole  pro- 
vince turn  out  to  eat  grass,  with  less  clamour  than  one 
Spitalfields  weaver  would  make  here,  if  the  overseers  were 
to  put  him  on  barley-bread.  In  those  new  countries  in 
which  a  civilized  population  has  at  its  command  a  bound- 
less extent  of  the  richest  soil,  the  condition  of  the  labourer 
is  probably  happier  than  in  any  society  which  has  lasted 
for  many  centuries.  But  in  the  old  world  we  must  confess 
ourselves  unable  to  find  any  satisfactory  record  of  any  great 
nation,  past  or  present,  in  which  the  working  classes  have 
been  in  a  more  comfortable  situation  than  in  England  du- 
ring the  last  thirty  years.  When  this  island  was  thinly 
peopled,  it  was  barbarous.  There  was  little  capital;  and 
that  little  was  insecure.  It  is  now  the  richest  and  the  most 
highly  civilized  spot  in  the  world;  but  the  population  is 
dense.  Thus  we  have  never  known  that  golden  age  which 
the  lower  orders  in  the  United  States  are  now  enjoying. 
"We  have  never  known  an  age  of  liberty,  of  order,  and  of 
education,  an  age  in  which  the  mechanical  sciences  were 
carried  to  a  great  height,  yet  in  which  the  people  were  not 
sufficiently  numerous  to  cultivate  even  the  most  fertile  val- 
leys. But,  when  we  compare  our  own  condition  with  that 
of  our  ancestors,  we  think  it  clear  that  the  advantages  arising 
from  the  progress  of  civilization  have  far  more  than  coun- 
terbalanced the  disadvantages  arising  from  the  progress  of 
population.  While  our  numbers  have  increased  tenfold, 
our  wealth  has  increased  a  hundredfold.  Though  there 
are  so  many  more  people  to  share  the  wealth  now  existing 
in  the  country  than  there  were  in  the  sixteenth  century,  it 
seems  certain,  that  a  greater  share  falls  to  almost  every  in- 
dividual than  fell  to  the  share  of  any  of  the  corresponding 
class  in  the  sixteenth  century.  The  king  keeps  a  more 
splendid  court.  The  establishments  of  the  nobles  are  more 
magnificent.  The  esquires  are  richer,  the  merchants  are 
richer,  the  shopkeepers  are  richer.  The  serving-man,  the 
artisan,  and  the  husbandman  have  a  more  copious  and  pa- 
latable supply  of  food,  better  clothing,  and  better  furniture. 
This  is  no  reason  for  tolerating  abuses,  or  for  neglecting  any 
means  of  ameliorating  the  condition  of  our  poorer  country 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  315 

men.  But  it  is  a  reason  against  telling  them,  ib  some  of 
our  philosophers  are  constantly  telling  them,  that  they  are 
the  most  wretched  people  who  ever  existed  on  the  face  of 
the  earth. 

We  have  already  adverted  to  Mr.  Southey^s  amusing  doc- 
trine about  national  wealth.  A  state,  says  he,  cannot  be  too 
rich ;  but  a  people  may  be  too  rich.  His  reason  for  think- 
ing this,  is  extremely  curious. 

'^  A  people  may  be  too  rich,  because  it  is  the  tendency  of 
the  commercial,  and  more  especially,  of  the  manufacturing 
system,  to  collect  wealth  rather  than  to  diffuse  it.  Where 
wealth  is  necessarily  employed  in  any  of  the  speculations  of 
trade,  its  increase  is  in  proportion  to  its  amount.  Great 
capitalists  become  like  pikes  in  a  fish-pond,  who  devour  the 
weaker  fish;  and  it  is  but  too  certain,  that  the  poverty  of 
one  part  of  the  people  seems  to  increase  in  the  same  ratio 
as  the  riches  of  another.  There  are  examples  of  this  in 
history.  In  Portugal,  when  the  high  tide  of  wealth  flowed 
in  from  the  conquests  in  Africa  and  the  East,  the  efi"ect  of 
that  great  influx  was  not  more  visible  in  the  augmented 
splendour  of  the  court,  and  the  luxury  of  the  higher  ranks, 
than  in  the  distress  of  the  people." 

Mr.  Southey's  instance  is  not  a  very  fortunate  one.  The 
wealth  which  did  so  little  for  the  Portuguese  was  not  the 
fruit  either  of  manufactures  or  of  commerce  carried  on  by 
private  individuals.  It  was  the  wealth,  not  of  the  people, 
but  of  the  government  and  its  creatures,  of  those  who,  as 
Mr.  Southey  thinks,  never  can  be  too  rich.  The  fact  is,  that 
Mr.  Southey's  proposition  is  opposed  to  all  history,  and  to 
the  phenomena  which  surround  us  on  every  side.  England 
is  the  richest  country  in  Europe,  the  most  commercial,  and 
the  most  manufacturing.  Russia  and  Poland  are  the  poorest 
countries  in  Europe.  They  have  scarcely  any  trade,  and 
none  but  the  rudest  manufactures.  Is  wealth  more  diffused 
in  Russia  and  Poland  than  in  England  ?  There  are  indivi- 
duals in  Russia  and  Poland  whose  incomes  are  probably 
equal  to  those  of  our  richest  countrymen.  It  may  be  doubted, 
whether  there  are  not,  in  those  countries,  as  many  fortunes 
of  eighty  thousand  a-year  as  here.  But  are  there  as  many 
fortunes  of  five  thousand  a-year,  or  of  one  thousand  a-year  ? 
There  are  parishes  in  England  which  contain  more  people 


S16        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

of  between  five  liimdred  and  three  thousand  pounds  a  year 
than  could  be  found  in  all  the  dominions  of  the  Emperor 
Nicholas.  The  neat  and  commodious  houses  which  have 
been  built  in  London  and  its  vicinity,  for  people  of  this  class, 
within  the  last  thirty  years,  would  of  themselves  form  a  city 
larger  than  the  capitals  of  some  European  kingdoms.  And 
this  is  the  state  of  society  in  which  the  great  proprietors  have 
devoured  the  smaller ! 

The  cure  that  Mr.  Southey  thinks  that  he  has  discovered 
is  worthy  of  the  sagacity  which  he  has  shown  in  detecting 
the  evil.  The  calamities  arising  from  the  collection  of 
wealth  in  the  hands  of  a  few  capitalists  are  to  be  remedied 
by  collecting  it  in  the  hands  of  one  great  capitalist,  who  has 
no  conceivable  motive  to  use  it  better  than  other  capitalists, 
— the  all-devouring  state. 

It  is  not  strange  that,  differing  so  widely  from  Mr.  Southey 
as  to  the  past  progress  of  society,  we  should  differ  from  him 
also  as  to  its  probable  destiny.  He  thinks,  that  to  all  out- 
ward appearance,  the  country  is  hastening  to  destruction ; 
but  he  relies  firmly  on  the  goodness  of  Grod.  We  do  not 
see  either  the  piety  or  the  rationality  of  thus  confidently 
expecting  that  the  Supreme  Being  will  interfere  to  disturb 
the  common  succession  of  causes  and  efi'ects.  We,  too,  rely 
on  his  goodness — on  his  goodness  as  manifested,  not  in  ex- 
traordinary interpositions,  but  in  those  general  laws  which 
it  has  pleased  him  to  establish  in  the  physical  and  in  the 
moral  world.  We  rely  on  the  natural  tendency  of  the  hu- 
man intellect  to  truth,  and  on  the  natural  tendency  of  society 
to  improvement.  We  know  no  well  authenticated  instance 
of  a  people  which  has  decidedly  retrograded  in  civilization 
and  prosperity,  except  from  the  influence  of  violent  and 
terrible  calamities — such  as  those  which  laid  the  Roman 
empire  in  ruins,  or  those  which,  about  the  beginning  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  desolated  Italy.  We  know  of  no  country 
which,  at  the  end  of  fifty  years  of  peace  and  tolertibly  good 
government,  has  been  less  prosperous  than  at  the  beginning 
of  that  period.  The  political  importance  of  a  state  may  de- 
cline, as  the  balance  of  power  is  disturbed  by  the  intro- 
duction of  new  forces.  Thus  the  influence  of  Holland  and 
of  Spain  is  much  diminished.  But  are  Holland  and  Spain 
poorer  than  formerly  ?     We  doubt  it.     Other  countries  have 


317 

outrun  them.  But  we  suspect  that  they  had  been  positively, 
though  not  relatively,  advancing.  We  suspect  that  Holland 
is  richer  than  when  she  sent  her  navies  up  the  Thames  j 
that  Spain  is  richer  than  when  a  French  king  was  brought 
captive  to  the  footstool  of  Charles  the  Fifth. 

History  is  full  of  the  signs  of  this  natural  progress  of 
society.  We  see  in  almost  every  part  of  the  annals  of 
mankind  how  the  industry  of  individuals,  struggling  up 
against  wars,  taxes,  famines,  conflagrations,  mischievous  pro- 
hibitions, and  more  mischievous  protections,  creates  faster 
than  governments  can  squander,  and  repairs  whatever  in- 
vaders can  destroy.  We  see  the  capital  of  nations  increas- 
ing, and  all  the  arts  of  life  approaching  nearer  and  nearer 
to  perfection,  in  spite  of  the  grossest  corruption  and  the 
wildest  profusion  on  the  part  of  rulers. 

The  present  moment  is  one  of  great  distress.  But  how 
small  will  that  distress  appear  when  we  think  over  the  his- 
tory of  the  last  forty  years; — a  war,  compared  with  which 
all  other  wars  sink  into  insignificance ;  taxation,  such  as  the 
most  heavily  taxed  people  of  former  times  could  not  have 
conceived ;  a  debt  larger  than  all  the  public  debts  that  ever 
existed  in  the  world  added  together;  the  food  of  the  people 
studiously  rendered  dear;  the  currency  imprudently  de- 
based, and  imprudently  restored.  Yet  is  the  country  poorer 
than  in  1790?  We  fully  believe  that,  in  spite  of  all  the 
misgovernment  of  her  rulers,  she  has  been  almost  constantly 
becoming  richer  and  richer.  Now  and  then  there  has  been 
a  stoppage,  now  and  then  a  short  retrogression;  but  as  to 
the  general  tendency,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  A  single 
breaker  may  recede,  but  the  tide  is  evidently  coming  in. 

If  we  were  to  prophesy  that,  in  the  year  1930,  a  popula- 
tion of  fifty  millions,  better  fed,  clad,  and  lodged  than  the 
English  of  our  time,  will  cover  these  islands ;  that  Sussex 
and  Huntingdonshire  will  be  wealthier  than  the  wealthiest 
parts  of  the  West-Riding  of  Yorkshire  now  are ;  that  culti- 
vation, rich  as  that  of  a  flower-garden,  will  be  carried  up  to 
the  very  tops  of  Ben  Nevis  and  Helvellyn ;  that  machines, 
constructed  on  principles  yet  undiscovered,  will  be  in  every 
house;  that  there  will  be  no  highways  but  railroads,  no 
travelling  but  by  steam;  and  our  debt,  vast  as  it  seems  to 
us,  will  appear  to  our  great-grandchildren  a  trifling  encum- 

27* 


318        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

brance,  wliicli  miglit  easily  be  paid  off  in  a  year  or  two, 
many  people  would  think  us  insane.  We  prophesy  nothing; 
but  this  we  say — If  any  person  had  told  the  Parliament 
which  met  in  perplexity  and  terror  after  the  crash  in  1720, 
that  in  1830  the  wealth  of  England  would  surpass  all  their 
wildest  dreams;  that  the  annual  revenue  would  equal  the 
principal  of  that  debt  which  they  considered  as  an  intolera- 
ble burden;  that  for  one  man  of  10,000/.  then  living,  there 
would  be  five  men  of  60,000?.;  that  London  would  be 
twice  as  large  and  twice  as  populous,  and  that  nevertheless 
the  mortality  would  have  diminished  to  one-half  what  it 
then  was ,  that  the  post-ofiice  would  bring  more  into  the  ex- 
chequer than  the  excise  and  customs  had  brought  in  together 
under  Charles  II. ;  that  stage-coaches  would  run  from  Lon- 
don to  York  in  twenty-four  hours ;  that  men  would  sail 
without  wind,  and  would  be  beginning  to  ride  without  horses, 
our  ancestor^  would  have  given  as  much  credit  to  the  pre- 
diction as  they  gave  to  Gulliver's  Travels.  Yet  the  predic- 
tion would  have  been  true ;  and  they  would  have  perceived 
that  it  was  not  altogether  absurd  if  they  had  considered  that 
the  country  was  then  raising  every  year  a  sum  which  would 
have  purchased  the  fee-simple  of  the  revenue  of  the  Plan- 
tagenets,  ten  times  what  supported  the  government  of  Eliza- 
beth, three  times  what,  in  the  time  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  had 
been  thought  intolerably  oppressive.  To  almost  all  men 
the  state  of  things  under  which  they  have  been  used  to  live 
seems  to  be  the  necessary  state  of  things.  We  have  heard 
it  said  that  five  per  cent,  is  the  natural  interest  of  money, 
that  twelve  is  the  natural  number  of  a  jury,  that  forty  shil- 
lings is  the  natural  qualification  of  a  county  voter.  Hence 
it  is  that,  though  in  every  age  everybody  knows  that  up  to 
his  own  time  progressive  improvement  has  been  taking  place, 
nobody  seems  to  reckon  on  any  improvement  during  the 
next  generation.  We  cannot  absolutely  prove  that  those  are 
in  error,  who  tell  us  that  society  has  reached  a  turning  point, 
that  we  have  seen  our  best  days.  But  so  said  all  who  came 
before  us,  and  with  just  as  much  apparent  reason.  "  A  mil- 
lion a  year  will  beggar  us,"  said  the  patriots  of  1640.  ^'  Two 
millions  a-year  will  grind  the  country  to  powder,''  was  tlie 
cry  in  1660.  ''  Six  millions  a-year,  and  a  debt  of  fifty  mil- 
lions 1"  exclaimed  Swift;  "the  high  allies  have  been  the 


southey's  colloquies  on  society.  319 

ruin  of  us."  '^  A  hundred  and  forty  millions  of  debt !"  said 
Junius ;  "  well  may  we  say  that  we  owe  Lord  Chatham  more 
than  we  shall  ever  pay,  if  we  owe  him  such  a  load  as  this." 
"  Two  hundred  and  forty  millions  of  debt !"  cried  all  the 
statesmen  of  1783  in  chorus ;  "  what  abilities,  or  what  eco- 
nomy on  the  part  of  a  minister,  can  save  a  country  so  bur- 
dened ?"  We  know  that  if,  since  1783,  no  fresh  debt  had 
been  incurred,  the  increased  resources  of  the  country  would 
have  enabled  us  to  defray  that  burden  at  which  Pitt,  Fox, 
and  Burke  stood  aghast — to  defray  it  over  and  over  again, 
and  that  with  much  lighter  taxation  than  what  we  have 
actually  borne.  On  what  principle  is  it,  that,  when  we  see 
nothing  but  improvement  behind  us,  we  are  to  expect 
nothing  but  deterioration  before  us  ? 

It  is  not  by  the  intermeddling  of  Mr.  Southey's  idol,  the 
omniscient  and  omnipotent  State,  but  by  the  prudence  and 
energy  of  the  people,  that  England  has  hitherto  been  car- 
ried forward  in  civilization ;  and  it  is  to  the  same  prudence 
and  the  same  energy  that  we  now  look  with  comfort  and 
good  hope.  Our  rulers  will  best  promote  the  improvement 
of  the  people  by  strictly  confining  themselves  to  their  own 
legitimate  duties ;  by  leaving  capital  to  find  its  most  lucra- 
tive course,  commodities  their  fair  price,  industry  and  intel- 
ligence their  natural  reward,  idleness  and  folly  their  natural 
punishment ;  by  maintaining  peace,  by  defending  property, 
by  diminishing  the  price  of  law,  and  by  observing  strict 
economy  in  every  department  of  the  state.  Let  the  govern- 
ment do  this — the  people  will  aissuredly  do  the  rest. 


[Edinburgh  Bevieio.] 

We  have  read  this  book  with  the  greatest  pleasure.  Con- 
sidered merely  as  a  composition^  it  deserves  to  be  classed 
among  the  best  specimens  of  English  prose  which  our  age 
has  produced.  It  contains,  indeed,  no  single  passage  equal 
to  two  or  three  which  we  could  select  from  the  Life  of 
Sheridan;  but,  as  a  whole,  it  it  immeasurably  superior  to 
that  work.  The  style  is  agreeable,  clear,  and  manly ;  and 
when  it  rises  into  eloquence,  rises  without  effort  or  osten- 
tation.    Nor  is  the  matter  inferior  to  the  manner. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  name  a  book  which  exhibits  more 
kindness,  fairness,  and  modesty.  It  has  evidently  been 
written,  not  for  the  purpose  of  showing,  what,  however,  it 
often  shows,  how  well  its  author  can  write ;  but  for  the  pur- 
pose of  vindicating,  as  far  as  truth  will  permit,  the  memory 
of  a  celebrated  man,  who  can  no  longer  vindicate  himself. 
Mr.  Moore  never  thrusts  himself  between  Lord  Byron  and 
the  public.  With  the  strongest  temptations  to  egotism,  he 
has  said  no  more  about  himself  than  the  subject  absolutely 
required.  A  great  part,  indeed  the  greater  part,  of  these 
volumes  consists  of  extracts  from  the  Letters  and  Journals 
of  Lord  Byron ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  speak  too  highly  of  the 
skill  which  has  been  shown  in  the  selection  and  arrange- 
ment. We  will  not  say  that  we  have  not  occasionally 
remarked  in  these  two  large  quartos  an  anecdote  which 
should  have  been  omitted,  a  letter  which  should  have  been 
suppressed,  a  name  which  should  have  been  conceal  id  by 


*  Letters  and  Journals  of  Lord  Byron ;  tvith  Notices  of  his  Life. 
By  Thomas  Moore,  Esq.     2  vols.  4to.     London,  1830. 
S20 


MOORE's  life  of  lord  BYRON.        321 

asterisks ;  or  asterisks  whicli  do  not  answer  the  purpose  of 
concealing  the  name.  But  it  is  impossible,  or  a  general 
survey,  to  deny  that  the  task  has  been  executed  with  gre«at 
judgment  and  great  humanity.  "When  we  consider  th«  life 
which  Lord  Byron  had  led,  his  petulance,  his  irritability, 
and  his  communicativeness,  we  cannot  but  admire  the  dex- 
terity with  which  Mr.  Moore  has  contrived  to  exhibit  so 
much  of  the  character  and  opinions  of  his  friend,  with  so 
little  pain  to  the  feelings  of  the  living. 

The  extracts  from  the  journals  and  correspondence  of 
Lord  Byron  are  in  the  highest  degree  valuable — not  merely 
on  account  of  the  information  which  they  contain  respect- 
ing the  distinguished  man  by  whom  they  were  written,  but 
on  account,  also,  of  their  rare  merit  as  compositions.  The 
Letters,  at  least  those  which  were  sent  from  Italy,  are 
among  the  best  in  our  language.  They  are  less  affected  than 
those  of  Pope  and  Walpole;  they  have  more  matter  in 
them  than  those  of  Cowper.  Knowing  that  many  of  them 
were  not  written  merely  for  the  person  to  whom  they  were 
directed,  but  were  general  epistles,  meant  to  be  read  by  a 
large  circle,  we  expected  to  find  them  clever  and  spirited, 
but  deficient  in  ease.  We  looked  with  vigilance  for  instances 
of  stiffness  in  the  language,  and  awkwardness  in  the  transi- 
tions. We  have  been  agreeably  disappointed ;  and  we  must 
confess,  that  if  the  epistolary  style  of  Lord  Byron  was  ar- 
tificial, it  was  a  rare  and  admirable  instance  of  that  highest 
art  which  cannot  be  distinguished  from  nature. 

Of  the  deep  and  painful  interest  which  this  book  excites, 
no  abstract  can  give  a  just  notion.  So  sad  and  dark  a  story 
is  scarcely  to  be  found  in  any  work  of  fiction ;  and  we  are 
little  disposed  to  envy  the  moralist  who  can  read  it  without 
being  softened. 

The  pretty  fable  by  which  the  Duchess  of  Orleans  illus- 
trates the  character  of  her  son  the  regent  might,  with  little 
change,  be  applied  to  Byron.  All  the  fairies,  save  one,  had 
been  bidden  to  his  cradle.  All  the  gossips  had  been  pro- 
fuse of  their  gifts.  One  had  bestowed  nobility,  another 
genius,  a  third  beauty.  The  malignant  elf  who  had  been 
uninvited  came  last,  and,  unable  to  reverse  what  her  sisters 
had  done  for  their  favourite,  had  mixed  up  a  curse  with  every 
blessing.     In  the  rank  of  Lord  Byron,  in  his  understandings 


322         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

in  his  character,  in  his  very  person,  there  was  a  strange 
union  of  opposite  extremes.  He  was  born  to  all  that  men 
covet  and  admire.  But  in  every  one  of  those  eminent  advan- 
tages which  he  possessed  over  others,  there  was  mingled 
something  of  misery  and  debasement.  He  was  sprung  from 
a  house,  ancient  indeed  and  noble,  but  degraded  and  impo- 
verished by  a  series  of  crimes  and  follies,  which  had  attained 
a  scandalous  publicity.  The  kinsman  whom  he  succeeded 
had  died  poor,  and,  but  for  merciful  judges,  would  have 
died  upon  the  gallows.  The  young  peer  had  groat  intel- 
lectual powers ',  yet  there  was  an  unsound  part  in  his  mind. 
He  had  naturally  a  generous  and  tender  heart ;  but  his  tem- 
per was  wayward  and  irritable.  He  had  a  head  which 
statuaries  loved  to  copy,  and  a  foot  the  deformity  of  which 
the  beggars  in  the  streets  mimicked.  Distinguished  at 
once  by  the  strength  and  by  the  weakness  of  his  intellect, 
affectionate  yet  perverse,  a  poor  lord,  and  a  handsome  crip- 
ple, he  required,  if  ever  man  required,  the  firmest  and  the 
most  judicious  training.  But,  capriciously  as  nature  had 
dealt  with  him,  the  relative  to  whom  the  office  of  forming 
his  character  was  intrusted  was  more  capricious  still.  She 
passed  from  paroxysms  of  rage  to  paroxysms  of  fondness. 
At  one  time  she  stifled  him  with  her  caresses,  at  another 
time  she  insulted  his  deformity.  He  came  into  the  world, 
and  the  world  treated  him  as  his  mother  treated  him — some- 
times with  kindness,  sometimes  with  severity,  never  with 
justice.  It  indulged  him  without  discrimination,  and  pu- 
nished him  without  discrimination.  He  was  truly  a  spoiled 
child ',  not  merely  the  spoiled  child  of  his  parents,  but  the 
spoiled  child  of  nature,  the  spoiled  child  of  fortune,  the 
spoiled  child  of  fame,  the  spoiled  child  of  society.  His  first 
poems  were  received  with  a  contempt  which,  feeble  as  they 
were,  they  did  not  absolutely  deserve.  The  poem  which  he 
published  on  his  return  from  his  travels  was,  on  the  other 
hand,  extolled  far  above  its  merits.  At  twenty-four,  he 
found  himself  on  the  highest  pinnacle  of  literary  fame,  with 
Scott,  Wordsworth,  Southey,  and  a  crowd  of  other  distin- 
guished writers,  beneath  his  feet.  There  is  scarcely  an  in- 
stance in  history  of  so  sudden  a  rise  to  so  dizzy  an  eminence. 
Every  thing  that  could  stimulate  and  every  thing  that  could 
gratify  the  strongest  propensities  of  our  nature — the  gaze  of 


MOORE's  life  of  lord  BYRON.  323 

a  hundred  drawing-rooms,  tlie  acclamations  of  the  whole 
nation,  the  applause  of  applauded  men,  the  love  of  the  love- 
liest of  women — all  this  world,  and  all  the  glory  of  it,  were 
at  once  offered  to  a  young  man,  to  whom  nature  had  given 
violent  passions,  and  whom  education  had  never  taught  to 
control  them.  He  lived  as  many  men  live  who  have  no 
similar  excuses  to  plead  for  their  faults.  But  his  country- 
men and  his  countrywomen  would  love  him  and  admire 
him.  They  were  resolved  to  see  in  his  excesses  only  the 
flash  and  outbreak  of  that  same  fiery  mind  which  glowed  in 
his  poetry.  He  attacked  religion ;  yet  in  religious  circles 
his  name  was  mentioned  with  fondness,  and  in  many  reli- 
gious publications  his  works  were  censured  with  singular 
tenderness.  He  lampooned  the  Prince  Regent;  yet  he 
could  not  alienate  the  Tories.  Every  thing,  it  seemed,  was 
to  be  forgiven  to  youth,  rank,  and  genius. 

Then  came  the  reaction.  Society,  capricious  in  its  in- 
dignation as  it  had  been  capricious  in  its  fondness,  flew  into 
a  rage  with  its  f reward  and  petted  darling.  He  had  been 
worshipped  with  an  irrational  idolatry.  He  was  perse- 
cuted with  an  irrational  fury.  Much  has  been  written  about 
those  unhappy  domestic  occurrences  which  decided  the 
fate  of  his  life.  Yet  nothing  ever  was  positively  known 
to  the  public,  but  this — that  he  quarrelled  with  his  l^y, 
and  that  she  refused  to  live  with  him.  There  have  been 
hints  in  abundance,  and  shrugs  and  shakings  of  the  head, 
and  ^'Well,  well,  we  know,^'  and  "We  could  an  if  we 
would,^'  and  "  If  we  list  to  speak,^^  and  "There  be  that 
might  an  they  list."  But  we  are  not  aware  that  there  is 
before  the  world,  substantiated  by  credible,  or  even  by  tan- 
gible evidence,  a  single  fact  indicating  that  Lord  Byron  was 
more  to  blame  than  any  other  man  who  is  on  bad  terms 
with  his  wife.  The  professional  men  whom  Lady  Byron 
consulted  were  undoubtedly  of  opinion  that  she  ought  not 
to  live  with  her  husband.  But  it  is  to  be  remembered  that 
they  formed  that  opinion  without  hearing  both  sides.  We 
do  not  say,  we  do  not  mean  to  insinuate  that  Lady  Byron 
was  in  any  respect  to  blame.  We  think  that  those  who 
condemn  her  on  the  evidence  which  is  now  before  the  pub- 
lic are  as  rash  as  those  who  condemn  her  husband.  We 
will  not  pronounce  any  judgment;  we  cannot,  even  in  our 


324  moore's  life  of  lord  byron. 

own  minds,  form  any  judgment  on  a  transaction  whicli  is 
so  imperfectly  known  to  us.  It  would  have  been  well  if, 
at  tlie  time  of  the  separation,  all  those  who  knew  as  little 
about  the  matter  then  as  we  know  about  it  now,  had  shown 
that  forbearance,  which,  under  such  circumstances,  is  but 
common  justice. 

We  know  no  spectacle  so  ridiculous  as  the  British  public 
in  one  of  its  periodical  fits  of  morality.  In  general,  elope- 
ments, divorces,  and  family  quarrels  pass  with  little 
notice.  We  read  the  scandal,  talk  about  it  for  a  day,  and 
forget  it.  But  once  in  six  or  seven  years,  our  virtue  becomes 
outrageous.  We  cannot  suffer  the  laws  of  religion  and 
decency  to  be  violated.  We  must  make  a  stand  against  vice. 
We  must  teach  libertines  that  the  English  people  appre- 
ciate the  importance  of  domestic  ties.  Accordingly,  some 
unfortunate  man,  in  no  respect  more  depraved  than  hun- 
dreds whose  offences  have  been  treated  with  lenity,  is 
singled  out  as  an  expiatory  sacrifice.  If  he  has  children, 
they  are  to  be  taken  from  him.  If  he  has  a  profession,  he 
is  to  be  driven  from  it.  He  is,  cut  by  the  higher  orders, 
and  hissed  by  the  lower.  He  is  in  truth,  a  sort  of  whip- 
ping-boy, by  whose  vicarious  agonies  all  the  other  trans- 
gressors of  the  same  class  are,  it  is  supposed,  sufiiciently 
chg^tised.  We  reflect  very  complacently  on  our  own 
severity,  and  compare  with  great  pride  the  high  standard 
of  morals  established  in  England  with  the  Parisian  laxity. 
At  length  our  anger  is  satiated.  Our  victim  is  ruined  and 
heart-broken,  and  our  virtue  goes  quietly  to  sleep  for 
seven  years  more. 

It  is  clear  that  those  vices  which  destroy  domestic  happi- 
ness ought  to  be  as  much  as  possible  repressed.  It  is 
equally  clear  that  they  cannot  be  repressed  by  penal  legisla- 
tion. It  is  therefore  right  and  desirable  that  public  opinion 
should  be  directed  against  them.  But  it  should  be  directed 
against  them  uniformly,  steadily,  and  temperately,  not  by 
Budden  fits  and  starts.  There  should  be  one  weight  and  one 
measure.  Decimation  is  always  an  objectionable  mode  of 
punishment.  It  is  the  resource  of  judges  too  indolent  and 
hasty  to  investigate  facts  and  to  discriminate  nicely  between 
shades  of  guilt.  It  is  an  irrational  practice,  ^ven  when 
adopted  by  military  tribunals.     When  adopted  by  the  tri- 


macaulay's  miscellaneous  ^vritings.         325 

bunal  of  public  opinion,  it  is  infinitely  more  irrational.  It 
is  good  that  a  certain  portion  of  disgrace  should  constantly 
attend  on  certain  bad  actions ;  but  it  is  not  good  that  the 
offenders  merely  have  to  stand  the  risk  of  a  lottery  of  in- 
famy; that  ninety-nine  out  of  every  hundred  should  escape, 
and  that  the  hundredth,  perhaps  the  most  innocent  of  the 
hundred,  should  pay  for  all.  We  remember  to  have  seen  a 
mob  assembled  in  Lincoln's  Inn  to  hoot  a  gentleman,  against 
whom  the  most  oppressive  proceeding  known  to  the  English 
law  was  then  in  progress.  He  was  hooted  because  he  had 
been  an  indifferent  and  unfaithful  husband,  as  if  some  of 
the  most  popular  men  of  the  age,  Lord  Nelson,  for  example, 
had  not  been  indifferent  and  unfaithful  husbands.  We  re- 
member a  still  stronger  case.  Will  posterity  believe,  that 
in  an  age  in  which  men,  whose  gallantries  were  universally 
known,  and  had  been  legally  proved,  filled  some  of  the 
highest  offices  in  the  state  and  in  the  army,  presided  at  the 
meetings  of  religious  and  benevolent  institutions,  were  the 
delight  of  every  society  and  the  favourites  of  the  multitude, 
a  crowd  of  moralists  went  to  the  theatre,  in  order  to  pelt  a 
poor  actor  for  disturbing  the  conjugal  felicity  of  an  alder- 
man ?  What  there  was  in  the  circumstances,  either  of  the 
offender,  or  of  the  sufferer,  to  vindicate  the  zeal  of  the  au- 
dience, we  could  never  conceive.  It  has  never  been^up- 
posed  that  the  situation  of  an  actor  is  peculiarly  favourable 
to  the  rigid  virtues,  or  that  an  alderman  enjoys  any  special 
immunity  from  injuries  such  as  that  which  on  this  occasion 
roused  the  anger  of  the  public.  But  such  is  the  justice  of 
mankind. 

In  these  cases,  the  punishment  was  excessive;  but  the 
offence  was  known  and  proved.  The  case  of  Lord  Byron 
was  harder.  True  Jedwood  justice  was  dealt  out  to  him. 
First  came  the  execution,  then  the  investigation,  and  last 
of  all,  or  rather  not  at  all,  the  accusation.  The  public, 
without  knowing  any  thing  whatever  about  the  transactions 
in  his  family,  flew  into  a  violent  passion  with  him,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  invent  stories  which  might  justify  its  anger.  Ten 
or  twenty  different  accounts  of  the  separation,  inconsist- 
ent with  each  other,  with  themselves,  and  with  common 
sense,  circulated  at  the  same  time.  What  evidence  there 
might  be  for  any  one  of  these,  the  virtuous  people  who 

Vol.  I.— 28 


3i.6        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

repeated  them  neither  knew  nor  cared.  For  in  fact  these 
stories  were  not  the  causes,  but  the  effects  of  the  public  in- 
dignation. They  resembled  those  loathsome  slanders  which 
G-oldsmith,  and  other  abject  libellers  of  the  same  class, 
were  in  the  habit  of  publishing  about  Bonaparte — how  he 
poisoned  a  girl  with  arsenic,  when  he  was  at  the  military 
school — how  he  hired  a  grenadier  to  shoot  Dessaix  at 
Marengo — how  he  filled  St.  Cloud  with  all  the  pollutions 
of  Capreos.  There  was  a  time  when  anecdotes  like  these 
obtained  some  credence  from  persons,  who,  hating  the 
French  Emperor,  without  knowing  why,  were  eager  to 
believe  any  thing  which  might  justify  their  hatred.  Lord 
Byron  fared  in  the  same  way.  His  countrymen  were  in  a 
bad  humour  with  him.  His  writings  and  his  character  had 
lost  the  charm  of  novelty.  He  had  been  guilty  of  the 
offence  which,  of  all  offences,  is  punished  more  severely; 
he  had  been  over-praised ;  he  had  excited  too  warm  an  in- 
terest; and  the  public,  with  its  usual  justice,  chastized  him 
for  its  own  folly.  The  attachments  of  the  multitude  bear 
no  small  resemblance  to  those  of  the  wanton  enchantress 
in  the  Arabian  Tales,  who,  when  the  forty  days  of  her 
fondness  were  over,  was  not  content  with  dismissing  her 
lovers,  but  condemned  them  to  expiate,  in  loathsome  shapes, 
and^mder  severe  punishments,  the  crime  of  having  once 
pleased  her  too  well. 

The  obloquy  which  Byron  had  to  endure  was  such  as 
might  well  have  shaken  a  more  constant  mind.  The  news- 
papers were  filled  with  lampoons.  The  theatres  shook  with 
execrations.  He  was  excluded  from  circles  where  he  had 
lately  been  the  observed  of  all  observers.  All  those  creep- 
ing things,  that  riot  in  the  decay  of  nobler  natures,  hastened 
to  their  repast;  and  they  were  right;  they  did  after  their 
kind.  It  is  not  every  day  that  the  savage  envy  of  aspiring 
dunces  is  gratified  by  the  agonies  of  such  a  spirit,  and  the 
degradation  of  such  a  name. 

The  unhappy  man  left  his  country  for  ever.  The  howl 
of  contumely  followed  him  across  the  sea,  up  the  Rhine, 
over  the  Alps;  it  gradually  waxed  fainter;  it  died  away. 
Those  who  had  raised  it,  began  to  ask  each  other,  what,  after 
all,  was  the  matter  about  which  they  had  been  so  clamorous; 
and  wished  to  invite  back  the  criminal  whom  they  had 


moore's  life  or  lord  byron.  327 

just  chased  from  them.  His  poetry  became  more  popular 
than  it  ever  had  been ;  and  his  complaints  were  read  with 
tears  by  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  who  had  never 
seen  his  face. 

He  had  fixed  his  home  on  the  shores  of  the  Adriatic,  in 
the  most  picturesque  and  interesting  of  cities,  beneath  the 
brightest  of  skies,  and  by  the  brightest  of  seas.  Censori- 
ousness  was  not  the  vice  of  the  neighbours  whom  he  had 
chosen.  They  were  a  race  corrupted  by  a  bad  government 
and  a  bad  relifjion;  lono-  renowned  for  skill  in  the  arts  of 
voluptuousness,  and  tolerant  of  all  the  caprices  of  sensuali- 
ty. From  the  public  opinion  of  the  country  of  his  adoption 
he  had  nothing  to  dread.  With  the  public  opinion  of  the 
country  of  his  birth  he  was  at  open  war.  He  plunged  into 
wild  and  desperate  excesses,  ennobled  by  no  generous  or 
tender  sentiment.  From  his  Venetian  harem,  he  sent  forth 
volume  after  volume,  full  of  eloquence,  of  wit,  of  pathos,  of 
ribaldry,  and  of  bitter  disdain.  His  health  sank  under  the 
efiects  of  his  intemperance.  His  hair  turned  gray.  His 
food  ceased  to  nourish  him.  A  hectic  fever  withered  him 
up.  It  seemed  that  his  body  and  mind  were  about  to  perish 
together. 

From  this  wretched  degradation  he  was  in  some  measure 
rescued  by  an  attachment,  culpable  indeed,  yet  such  as, 
judged  by  the  standard  of  morality  established  in  the  coun- 
try where  he  lived,  might  be  called  virtuous.  But  an  imagi- 
nation polluted  by  vice,  a  temper  imbittered  by  misfortune, 
and  a  frame  habituated  to  the  fatal  excitement  of  intoxication, 
prevented  him  from  fully  enjoying  the  happiness  which  he 
might  have  derived  from  the  purest  and  most  tranquil  of  his 
many  attachments.  Midnight  draughts  of  ardent  spirits  and 
Rhenish  wines  had  begun  to  work  the  ruin  of  his  tine  intel- 
lect. His  verse  lost  much  of  the  energy  and  condensation 
which  had  distinguished  it.  But  he  would  not  resign,  with- 
out a  stmggle,  the  empire  which  he  had  exercised  over  the 
men  of  his  generation.  A  new  dream  of  ambition  arose 
before  him,  to  be  the  centre  of  a  literary  party;  the  great 
mover  of  an  intellectual  revolution;  to  guide  the  public  mind 
of  England  from  his  Italian  retreat,  as  Voltaire  had  guided 
the  public  mind  of  France  from  the  villa  of  Ferney.  With 
this  hope,  as  it  should  seem,  he  established  The  Liberal. 


328  MACAULAY's  miscellaneous  ■VVRiriNGS. 

But,  powerfully  as  he  had  affected  the  imaginations  of  his 
contemporaries,  he  mistook  his  own  powers,  if  he  hoped  to 
direct  their  opinions :  and  he  still  more  grossly  mistook  his 
own  disposition,  if  he  thought  that  he  could  long  act  in  con- 
cert with  other  men  of  letters.  The  plan  failed,  and  failed 
ignominiously.  Angry  with  himself,  angry  with  his  coad- 
jutors, he  relinquished  it;  and  turned  to  another  project, 
the  last  and  the  noblest  of  his  life. 

A  nation,  once  the  first  among  the  nations,  pre-eminent 
in  knowledge,  pre-eminent  in  military  glory,  the  cradle  of 
philosophy,  of  eloquence,  and  of  the  fine  arts,  had  been  for 
ages  bowed  down  under  a  cruel  yoke.  All  the  vices  which 
tyranny  generates — the  abject  vices  which  it  generates  in 
those  who  submit  to  it,  the  ferocious  vices  which  it  gene- 
rates in  those  who  struggle  against  it — had  deformed  the 
character  of  that  miserable  race.  The  valour  which  had 
won  the  great  battle  of  human  civilization,  which  had  saved 
Europe,  and  subjugated  Asia,  lingered  only  among  piratea 
and  robbers.  The  ingenuity,  once  so  conspicuously  dis- 
played in  every  department  of  physical  and  moral  science, 
had  been  depraved  into  a  timid  and  servile  cunning.  On  a 
sudden,  this  degraded  people  had  risen  on  their  oppressors. 
Discountenanced  or  betrayed  by  the  surrounding  potentates, 
fhey  had  found  in  themselves  something  of  that  which 
might  well  supply  the  place  of  all  foreign  assistance — 
something  of  the  energy  of  their  fathers. 

As  a  man  of  letters,  Lord  Byron  could  not  but  be  inte- 
rested in  the  event  of  this  contest.  His  political  opinions, 
though,  like  all  his  opinions,  unsettled,  leaned  strongly  to- 
wards the  side  of  liberty.  He  had  assisted  the  Italian  in- 
surgents with  his  purse ;  and  if  their  struggle  against  the 
Austrian  government  had  been  prolonged,  would  probably 
have  assisted  them  with  his  sword.  But  to  Greece  he  was 
attached  by  peculiar  ties.  He  had,  when  young,  resided 
in  that  country.  Much  of  his  most  splendid  and  popular 
poetry  had  been  inspired  by  its  s-cencry  and  by  its  history. 
Sick  of  inaction,  degraded  in  his  own  eyes  by  his  private 
vices  and  by  his  literary  failures,  pining  for  untried  excite- 
ment and  honourable  distinction,  he  carried  his  exhausted 
body  and  his  wounded  spirit  to  the  Grecian  camp. 

His  conduct  in  his  new  situation  showed  so  much  vigour 


Moore's  life  of  lord  byron.  329 

and  good  sense  as  to  justify  us  in  believeing,  that,  if  his  life 
had  been  prolonged,  he  might  have  distinguished  himself 
as  a  soldier  and  a  politician.  But  pleasure  and  sorrow  had 
done  the  work  of  seventy  years  upon  his  delicate  frame.  The 
hand  of  death  was  on  him ;  he  knew  it ;  and  the  only  wish 
which  he  uttered  was  that  he  might  die  sword  in  hand. 

This  was  denied  to  him.  Anxiety,  exertion,  exposure, 
and  those  fatal  stimulants  which  had  become  indispensable 
to  him,  soon  stretched  him  on  a  sick-bed,  in  a  strange  land, 
amidst  strange  faces,  without  one  human  being  that  he  loved 
near  him.  There,  at  thirty-six,  the  most  celebrated  Eng- 
lishman of  the  nineteenth  century  closed  his  brilliant  and 
miserable  career. 

We  cannot  even  now  retrace  those  events  without  feeling 
something  of  what  was  felt  by  the  nation,  when  it  was  first 
known  that  the  grave  had  closed  over  so  much  sorrow  and 
so  much  glory ', — something  of  what  was  felt  by  those  who 
saw  the  hearse,  with  its  long  train  of  coaches,  turn  slowly 
northward,  leaving  behind  it  that  cemetery,  which  had  been 
consecrated  by  the  dust  of  so  many  great  poets,  but  of  which 
the  doors  were  closed  against  all  that  remained  of  Byron. 
We  well  remember  that,  on  that  day,  rigid  moralists  could 
not  refrain  from  weeping  for  one  so  young,  so  illustrious,  so 
unhappy,  gifted  with  such  rare  gifts,  and  tried  by  such  strong 
temptations.  It  is  unnecessary  to  make  any  reflections. 
The  history  carries  its  moral  with  it.  Our  age  has  indeed 
been  fruitful  of  warnings  to  the  eminent,  and  of  consolations 
to  the  obscure.  Two  men  have  died  within  our  recollec- 
tion, who,  at  a  time  of  life  at  which  few  people  have  com- 
pleted their  education,  had  raised  themselves,  each  in  his 
own  department,  to  the  height  of  glory.  One  of  them  died 
at  Longwood;  the  other  at  5lissolonghi. 

It  is  always  difficult  to  separate  the  literary  character  of 
a  man  who  lives  in  our  own  time  from  his  personal  character- 
It  is  peculiarly  difficult  to  make  this  separation  in  the  case 
of  Lord  Byron.  For  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say,  that 
Lord  Byron  never  wrote  without  some  reference,  direct  or 
indirect,  to  himself.  The  interest  excited  by  the  events  of 
his  life  mingles  itself  in  our  minds,  and  probably  in  the  minds 
of  almost  all  our  readers,  with  the  interest  which  properly 
belongs  to  his  works.     A  generation  must  pass  away  before 

28^ 


830        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

it  will  be  possible  to  form  a  fair  judgment  of  his  books^  con- 
sidered merely  as  books.  At  present  they  are  not  only 
books,  but  relics.  We  will,  however,  venture,  though  with 
unfeigned  diffidence,  to  offer  some  desultory  remarks  on  his 
poetry. 

His  lot  was  cast  in  the  time  of  a  great  literary  revolution. 
That  poetical  dynasty  which  had  dethroned  the  successors 
of  Shakspeare  and  Spenser  was,  in  its  turn,  dethroned  by  a 
race  who  represented  themselves  as  heirs  of  the  ancient  line, 
so  long  dispossessed  by  usurpers.  The  real  nature  of  this 
revolution  has  not,  we  think,  been  comprehended  by  the 
great  majority  of  those  who  concurred  in  it. 

If  this  question  were  proposed — wherein  especially  does 
the  poetry  of  our  times  differ  from  that  of  the  last  century  ? 
ninety-nine  persons  out  of  a  hundred  would  answer  that  the 
poetry  of  the  last  century  was  correct,  but  cold  and  mechani- 
cal, and  that  the  poetry  of  our  time,  though  wild  and  irre- 
gular, presented  far  more  vivid  images,  and  excited  the  pas- 
sions far  more  strongly,  than  that  of  Parnell,  of  Addison,  or 
of  Pope.  In  the  same  manner,  we  constantly  hear  it  said, 
that  the  poets  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  had  far  more  genius, 
but  far  less  correctness,  than  those  of  the  age  of  Anne.  It 
seems  to  be  taken  for  granted,  that  there  is  some  necessary 
incompatibility,  some  antithesis,  between  correctness  and 
creative  power.  We  rather  suspect  that  this  notion  arises 
merely  from  an  abuse  of  words ;  and  that  it  has  been  the 
parent  of  many  of  the  fallacies  which  perplex  the  science  of 
criticism. 

What  is  meant  by  correctness  in  poetry?  If  by  correct- 
ness be  meant  the  conforming  to  rules  which  have  their 
foundation  in  truth  and  in  the  principles  of  human  nature, 
then  correctness  is  only  another  name  for  excellence.  If 
by  correctness  be  meant  the  conforming  to  rules  purely 
arbitrary,  correctness  may  be  another  name  for  dulness  and 
absurdity. 

A  writer  who  describes  visible  objects  falsely,  and  violates 
the  propriety  of  character — a  writer  who  makes  the  moun- 
tains "  nod  their  drowsy  heads^^  at  night,  or  a  dying  man 
take  leave  of  the  world  with  a  rant  like  that  of  Maximin, 
may  be  said,  in  the  high  and  just  sense  of  the  phrase,  to 
write  incorrectly.     He  violates  the  first  great  law  of  his  art. 


MOORE^S  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON.         331 

His  imitation  is  altogether  unlike  the  thing  imitated.  The 
four  poets  who  are  most  eminently  free  from  incorrectness 
of  this  description  are  Horner^  Dante,  Shakspeare,  and  Mil- 
ton. They  are,  therefore,  in  one  sense,  and  that  the  best 
sense,  the  most  correct  of  poets. 

When  it  is  said  that  Virgil,  though  he  had  less  genius  than 
Homer,  was  a  more  correct  writer,  what  sense  is  attached  to 
the  word  correctness?  Is  it  meant  that  the  story  of  the 
^neid  is  developed  more  skilfully  than  that  of  the  Odyssey  ? 
that  the  Roman  describes  the  face  of  the  external  world,  or 
the  emotions  of  the  mind,  more  accurately  than  the  G-reek  ? 
that  the  characters  of  Achates  and  Mnestheus  are  more 
nicely  discriminated,  and  more  consistently  supported,  than 
those  of  Achilles,  of  Nestor,  and  of  Ulysses?  The  fact 
incontestably  is,  that  for  every  violation  of  the  fundamental 
laws  of  poetry,  which  can  be  found  in  Homer,  it  would  be 
easy  to  find  twenty  in  Virgil. 

Troilus  and  Cressida  is  perhaps  of  all  the  plays  of  Shak- 
speare  that  which  is  commonly  considered  as  the  most  in- 
correct. Yet  it  seems  to  us  infinitely  more  correct,  in  the 
sound  sense  of  the  term,  than  what  are  called  the  most 
correct  plays  of  the  most  correct  dramatists.  Compare  it, 
for  example,  with  the  Iphigenie  of  Racine.  We  are  sure 
that  the  Greeks  of  Shakspeare  bear  a  far  greater  resemblance 
than  the  Greeks  of  Racine,  to  the  real  Greeks  who  besieged 
Troy;  and,  for  this  reason,  that  the  Greeks  of  Shakspeare 
are  human  beings,  and  the  Greeks  of  Racine  mere  names ; 
— mere  words  printed  in  capitals  at  the  head  of  paragraphs 
of  declamation.  Racine,  it  is  true,  would  have  shuddered 
at  the  thought  of  making  Agamemnon  quote  Aristotle.  But 
of  what  use  is  it  to  avoid  a  single  anachronism,  when  the 
whole  play  is  one  anachronism — the  topics  and  phrases  of 
Versailles  in  the  camp  of  Aulis  ? 

In  the  sense  in  which  we  are  now  using  the  word  cor- 
rectness, we  think  that  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Mr.  Wordsworth, 
Mr.  Coleridge,  are  far  more  correct  writers  than  those  who 
are  commonly  extolled  as  the  models  of  correctness — Pope, 
for  example,  and  Addison.  The  single  description  of  a 
moonlight  night  in  Pope's  Iliad  contains  more  inaccura- 
cies than  can  be  found  in  all  the  Excursion.  There  is  not 
a  single  scene  in  Cato,  in  which  every  thing  that  condaces  to 


332 

poetical  illusion — the  propriety  of  character,  of  language, 
of  situation,  is  not  more  grossly  violated  than  in  any  part  of 
the  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel.  No  man  can  possibly  think 
that  the  Romans  of  Addison  resemble  the  real  Romans,  so 
closely  as  the  moss-troopers  of  Scott  resemble  the  real  moss- 
troopers. Watt  Tinlinn  and  William  of  Deloraine  are  not, 
it  is  true,  persons  of  so  much  dignity  as  Cato.  But  the  dig- 
nity of  the  persons  represented  has  as  little  to  do  with  the 
correctness  of  poetry,  as  with  the  correctness  of  painting. 
We  prefer  a  gipsy  by  Reynolds  to  his  Majesty's  head  on  a 
signpost,  and  a  borderer  by  Scott  to  a  senator  by  Addison. 

In  what  sense,  then,  is  the  word  correctness  used  by  those 
who  say,  with  the  author  of  the  Pursuits  of  Literature,  that 
Pope  was  the  most  correct  of  English  poets,  and  that  next 
to  Pope  came  the  late  Mr.  Grifford?  What  is  the  nature 
and  value  of  that  correctness,  the  praise  of  which  is  denied 
to  Macbeth,  to  Lear,  and  to  Othello,  and  given  to  Hoole's 
translations  and  to  all  the  Seatonian  prize  poems?  We  can 
discover  no  eternal  rule,  no  rule  founded  in  reason  and  in 
the  nature  of  things,  which  Shakspeare  does  not  observe 
much  more  strictly  than  Pope.  But  if  by  correctness  be 
meant  the  conforming  to  a  narrow  legislation,  which,  while 
lenient  to  the  mala  in  se,  multiplies,  without  the  shadow 
of  a  reason,  the  77iala  prohibita  ;  if  by  correctness  be  meant 
a  strict  attention  to  certain  ceremonious  observances,  which 
are  no  more  essential  to  poetry  than  etiquette  to  good  go- 
vernment, or  than  the  washings  of  a  Pharisee  to  devotion; 
then,  assuredly.  Pope  may  be  a  more  correct  poet  than 
Shakspeare ;  and,  if  the  code  were  a  little  altered,  Colley 
Gibber  might  be  a  more  correct  poet  than  Pope.  But  it 
may  well  be  doubted  whether  this  kind  of  correctness  be  a 
merit;  nay,  whether  it  be  not  an  absolute  fault. 

It  would  be  amusing  to  make  a  digest  of  the  irrational 
laws  which  bad  critics  have  framed  for  the  government  of 
poets.  First  in  celebrity  and  in  absurdity  stand  the  dramatic 
unities  of  place  and  time.  No  human  being  has  ever  been 
able  to  find  any  thing  that  could,  even  by  courtesy,  be  called 
an  argument  for  these  unities,  except  that  they  have  been 
deduced  from  the  general  practice  of  the  Greeks.  It  re- 
quires no  very  profound  examination  to  discover  that  the 
Greek  dramas,  often  admirable  as  compositions,  are,  as  ex- 


MOORE^S   LIFE    OF   LORD    BYRON.  333 

hibitions  of  human  character  and  human  life,  far  inferior  to 
the  English  plays  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  Every  scholar 
knows  that  the  dramatic  part  of  the  Athenian  tragedies  was 
at  first  subordinate  to  the  lyrical  part.  It  wt)uld,  therefore, 
have  been  little  less  than  a  miracle,  if  the  laws  of  the  Athe- 
nian stage  had  been  found  to  suit  plays  in  which  there 
was  no  chorus.  All  the  great  masterpieces  of  the  dramatic 
art  have  been  composed  in  direct  violation  of  the  unities, 
and  could  never  have  been  composed  if  the  unities  had  not 
been  violated.  It  is  clear,  for  example,  that  such  a  cha- 
racter as  that  of  Hamlet  could  never  have  been  developed 
within  the  limits  to  which  Alfieri  confined  himself.  Yet 
such  was  the  reverence  of  literary  men  during  the  last  cen- 
tury for  these  unities,  that  Johnson,  who,  much  to  his 
honour,  took  the  opposite  side,  was,  as  he  says,  ^^  frighted 
at  his  own  temerity;"  and  '' afraid  to  stand  against  the 
authorities  which  might  be  produced  against  him.^^ 

There  are  other  rules  of  the  same  kind  without  end. 
"  Shakspeare,"  says  Rymer,  "  ought  not  to  have  made 
Othello  black  ;  for  the  hero  of  a  tragedy  ought  always  to  be 
white. ^^  "  Milton/'  says  another  critic,  "  ought  not  to  have 
taken  Adam  for  his  hero ;  for  the  hero  of  an  epic  poem 
ought  always  to  be  victorious.'^  "  Milton,''  says  another, 
'^  ought  not  to  have  put  so  many  similes  into  his  first  book ; 
for  the  first  book  of  an  epic  poem  ought  always  to  be  the 
most  unadorned.  There  are  no  similes  in  the  first  book  of 
the  Iliad."  "  Milton,"  says  another,  ^'  ought  not  to  have 
placed  in  an  epic  poem  such  lines  as  these  : 

*  I  also  erred  in  overmuch  admiring.' " 

And  why  not  ?  The  critic  is  ready  with  a  reason — a  lady's 
reason.  ^'  Such  lines,"  says  he,  "  are  not,  it  must  be  allowed, 
unpleasing  to  the  ear ;  but  the  redundant  syllable  ought 
to  be  confined  to  the  drama,  and  not  admitted  into  epic 
poetry."  As  to  the  redundant  syllable  in  heroic  rhyme,  on 
serious  subjects,  it  has  been,  from  the  time  of  Pope  down- 
ward, proscribed  by  the  general  consent  of  all  the  correct 
school.  'No  magazine  would  have  admitted  so  incorrect  a 
couplet  as  that  of  Drayton, 

**  As  when  we  lived  untouch'd  with  these  disgraces, 
When  as  our  kingdom  was  our  dear  embraces." 


334  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

Another  law  of  heroic  peetry,  which,  fifty  years  ago,  was 
considered  as  fundamental,  was,  that  there  shoaild  be  a 
pause — a  comma  at  least,  at  the  end  of  every  couplet.  It 
was  also  provided  that  there  should  never  be  a  full  stop  ex- 
cept at  the  end  of  a  couplet.  Well  do  we  remember  to 
have  heard  a  most  correct  judge  of  poetry  revile  Mr.  Rogers 
for  the  incorrectness  of  that  most  sweet  and  graceful  passage, 

<"Twas  thine,  Maria,  thine,  without  a  sigh, 
At  midnight  in  a  sister's  arms  tc  die, 
Nursing  the  young  to  health." 

Sir  Roger  Newdigate  is  fairly  entitled,  we  think,  to  be 
ranked  among  the  great  critics  of  this  school.  He  made  a 
law  that  none  of  the  poems  written  for  the  prize  which  he 
established  at  Oxford  should  exceed  fifty  lines.  This  law 
seems  to  us  to  have  at  least  as  much  foundation  in  reason 
as  any  of  those  which  we  have  mentioned ;  nay,  much  more  j 
for  the  world,  we  believe,  is  pretty  well  agreed  in  thinking 
that  the  shorter  a  prize  poem  is,  the  better. 

'  We  do  not  see  why  we  should  not  make  a  few  more  rules 
of  the  same  kind — why  we  should  not  enact  that  the  num- 
ber of  scenes  in  every  act  shall  be  three,  or  some  multiple 
of  three ;  that  the  number  of  lines  in  every  scene  shall  be 
an  exact  square  ;  that  the  dramatis  personss  shall  never  be 
more  nor  fewer  than  sixteen ;  and  that,  in  heroic  rhymes, 
every  thirty-sixth  line  shall  have  twelve  syllables.  If  we 
were  to  lay  down  these  canons,  and  to  call  Pope,  Gold- 
smith, and  Addison  incorrect  writers,  for  not  having  com- 
plied with  our  whims,  we  should  act  precisely  as  those  critics 
act,  who  find  incorrectness  in  the  magnificent  imagery  and 
the  varied  music  of  Coleridge  and  Shelley. 

The  correctness,  which  the  last  century  prized  so  much, 
resembled  the  correctness  of  those  pictures  of  the  garden  of 
Eden  which  we  see  in  old  Bibles — an  exact  square,  enclosed 
by  the  rivers  Pison,  Gihon,  Hiddekel,  and  Euphrates,  each 
with  a  convenient  bridge  in  the  centre — rectangular  beds  of 
flowers — a  long  canal,  neatly  bricked  and  railed  in — the  tree 
of  knowledge,  clipped  like  one  of  the  limes  behind  the  Tui- 
leries,  standing  in  the  centre  of  the  grand  alley — the  snake 
twined  round  it — the  man  on  the  right  hand,  the  woman  on 
the  left,  and  the  beasts  drawn  up  in  an  exact  circle  round 


335 

them.  In  one  sense,  the  picture  is  correct  enough  :  that 
is  to  say,  the  squares  are  correct;  the  circles  are  correct; 
the  man  and  woman  are  in  a  most  correct  line  with  the  tree ; 
and  the  snake  forms  a  most  correct  spiral. 

But  if  there  were  a  painter  so  gifted,  that  he  should  place 
in  the  canvas  that  glorious  paradise,  seen  by  the  interior 
eye  of  him  whose  outward  sight  had  failed  with  long  watch- 
ing and  laboui'ing  for  liberty  and  truth — if  there  were  a 
painter  who  could  set  before  us  the  mazes  of  the  sapphire 
brook,  the  lake  with  its  fringe  of  myrtles,  the  flowery  mea- 
dows, the  grottoes  overhung  by  vines,  the  forests  shining  with 
Hesperian  fruit,  and  with  the  plumage  of  gorgeous  birds,,the 
massy  shade  of  that  nuptial  bower  which  showered  down 
roses  on  the  sleeping  lovers — what  should  we  think  of  a 
connoisseur  who  should  tell  us  that  this  painting,  though 
finer  than  the  absurd  picture  of  the  old  Bible,  was  not  so 
correct?  Surely  we  should  answer — It  is  both  finer  and 
more  correct ;  and  it  is  finer  because  it  is  more  correct.  It 
is  not  made  up  of  correctly  drawn  diagrams ;  but  it  is  a 
correct  painting,  a  worthy  representation  of  that  which  it 
is  intended  to  represent. 

It  is  not  in  the  fine  arts  alone  that  this  false  correctness 
is  prized  by  narrow-minded  men — by  men  who  cannot  dis- 
tinguish means  from  ends,  or  what  is  accidental  from  what 
is  essential.  Mr,  Jourdain  admired  correctness  in  fencing. 
"You  had  no  business  to  hit  me  then.  You  must  never 
thrust  in  quart  till  you  have  thrust  in  tierce.''  M.  Tomes 
liked  correctness  in  medical  practice.  "  I  stand  up  for  Ar- 
temius.  That  he  killed  his  patient  is  plain  enough.  But 
still  he  acted  quite  according  to  rule.  A  man  dead  is  a  man 
dead ;  and  there  is  an  end  of  the  matter.  But  if  rules  are 
to  be  broken,  there  is  no  saying  what  consequences  may 
follow."  "We  have  heard  of  an  old  German  officer,  who  was 
a  great  admirer  of  correctness  in  military  operations.  He 
used  to  revile  Bonaparte  for  spoiling  the  science  of  war, 
which  had  been  carried  to  such  an  exquisite  perfection  by 
Marshal  Daun.  '^In  my  youth  we  used  to  march  and  coun- 
termarch all  the  summer  without  gaining  or  losing  a  square 
league,  and  then  we  went  into  winter  quarters.  And  now 
comes  an  ignorant,  hot-headed  young  man,  who  flies  about 
from  Boulogne  to  Ulm,  and  from  Ulm  to  the  middle  of 
Moravia,  and  fights  battles  in  December.     The  whole  sys- 


336  MACAULAY^S    MISCELLANEOUS    WRITINGS. 

tern  of  his  tactics  is  monstrously  incorrect."  The  world  is 
of  opinion,  in  spite  of  critics  like  these,  that  the  end  of 
fencing  is  to  hit,  that  the  end  of  medicine  is  to  cure,  that 
the  end  of  war  is  to  conquer,  and  that  those  means  are  the 
most  correct  which  best  accomplish  the  ends. 

And  has  poetry  no  end,  no  eternal  and  immutable  princi- 
ples ?  Is  poetry,  like  heraldry,  mere  matter  of  arbitrary 
regulation  ?  The  heralds  tell  us  that  certain  scutcheons  and 
bearings  denote  certain  conditions,  and  that  to  put  colours  on 
colours,  or  metals  on  metals,  is  false  blazonry.  If  all  this 
were  reversed  ;  if  every  coat  of  arms  in  Europe  were  new- 
fashioned  ;  if  it  were  decreed  that  or  should  never  be  placed 
but  on  argent^  or  argent  but  on  or  ;  that  illegitimacy  should 
be  denoted  by  a  lozenge^  and  widowhood  by  a  hend^  the 
new  science  would  be  just  as  good  as  the  old  science,  be- 
cause both  the  new  and  the  old  would  be  good  for  nothing. 
The  mummery  of  Portcullis  and  Rogue  Dragon,  as  it 
has  no  other  value  than  that  which  caprice  has  assigned  to 
it,  may  well  submit  to  any  laws  which  caprice  may  impose 
on  it.  But  it  is  not  so  with  that  great  imitative  art,  to  the 
power  of  which  all  ages,  the  rudest  and  the  most  enlight- 
ened, bear  witness.  Since  its  first  great  masterpieces  were 
produced,  every  thing  that  is  changeable  in  this  world  has 
been  changed.  Civilization  has  been  gained,  lost,  gained 
again.  Religions,  and  languages,  and  forms  of  government, 
and  usages  of  private  life,  and  the  modes  of  thinking,  all  have 
undergone  a  succession  of  revolutions.  Every  thing  has 
passed  away  but  the  great  features  of  nature,  the  heart  of 
man,  and  the  miracles  of  that  art  of  which  it  is  the  office 
to  reflect  back  the  heart  of  man  and  the  features  of  nature. 
Those  two  strange  old  poems,  the  wonder  of  ninety  genera- 
tions, still  retain  all  their  freshness.  They  still  command 
the  veneration  of  minds  enriched  by  the  literature  of  many 
nations  and  ages.  They  are  still,  even  in  wretched  transla- 
tions, the  delight  of  school-boys.  Having  survived  ten  thou- 
sand capricious  fashions ;  having  seen  successive  codes  of 
criticism  become  obsolete,  they  still  remain,  immortal  with 
the  immortality  of  truth,  the  same  when  perused  in  the  study 
of  an  English  scholar,  as  when  they  were  first  chanted  at 
the  banquets  of  the  Ionian  princes. 

Poetry  is,  as  that  most  acute  of  human  beings,  Aristotle, 


MOORE* S   LIFE   OF   LORD   BYRON.  337 

said,  more  tlian  two  thousand  years  ago,  imitation.  ^   It  is 
an  art  analogous   in  many  respects  to  tlie  art  of  pamtmg, 
sculpture,  and  acting.      The  imitations  of  the  painter,  the 
sculptor,  and  the  actor  are,  indeed,  withm  certain  limits, 
more  perfect  than  those  of  the  poet.    The  machmery  which 
the    poet   employs  consists  merely  of   words;    and  words 
cannot,  even  when  employed  by  such  an  artist  as  Homer 
or  Dante,  present  to  the  mind  images  of  visible  objects 
quite  so  lively  and  exact  as  those  which  we  carry  away 
from  lookino-  on  the  works  of  the  brush  and  the  chisel. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  range  of  poetry  is  infinitely 
wider  than  that  of  any  other  imitative  art,  or  than  that  ot 
all  the  other  imitative  arts  together.    The  sculptor  can  imi- 
tate only  form ;  the  painter  only  form  and  colour ;  the  actor, 
until  the  poet  supplies  him  with  words,  only  form,  colour, 
and  motion.     Poetry  holds  the  outer  world  m    common 
with  the  other  arts.     The  heart  of  man  is  the  province  ot 
poetry,  and  of  poetry  alone.     The  painter,  the   sculptor, 
and  the  actor,  when  the  actor  is  unassisted  by  the  poet,  can 
exhibit  no  more  of  human  passion  and  character  than  that 
small  portion  which  overflows  into  the  gesture  and  the  face 
—always  an  imperfect,  often  a  deceitful,  sign  of  that  which 
is  within.     The  deeper  and  more  complex  parts  of  n^^^an 
nature  can  be  exhibited  by  means  of  words  alone.      Thus 
the  objects  of  the  imitation  of  poetry  are  the  whole  exter- 
nal and  the  whole  internal  universe,  the  face  of  nature,  the 
vicissitudes  of  fortune,  man  as  he  is  in  himself,  man  as  he 
appears  in  society,  all  things  of  which  we  can  form  an 
imatre  in  our  minds,  by  combining  together  parts  of  things 
which  really  exist.     The   domain  of  this  imperial  art  is 
commensurate  with  the  imaginative  faculty. 

An  art  essentially  imitative  ought  not  surely  to  be  sub- 
iected  to  rules  which  tend  to  make  its  imitations  less  per- 
fect than  they  would  otherwise  be )  and  those  who  obey  such 
rules  ought  to  be  called,  not  correct,  but  incorrect  artists. 
The  true  way  to  judge  of  the  rules  by  which  English  poetry 
was  governed  during  the  last  century,  is  to  look  at  the  effects 

which  they  produced.  .  ,  .    t  •         ^  +i. 

It  was  in  1780  that  Johnson  completed  his  Livesot  the 
Poets.     He  tells  us  in  that  work,  that,  since  the  time  ot 
Dryden,  English  poetry  had  shown  no  tendency  to  relapse 
Vol.  I.— 29 


838  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

into  its  original  savageness ;  that  its  language  had  been  *<j- 
fined,  its  numbers  tuned,  and  its  sentiments  improved.  It 
may,  perhaps,  be  doubted  whether  the  nation  had  any 
great  reason  to  exult  in  the  refinements  and  improvements 
■which  gave  it  Douglas  for  Othello,  and  the  Triumphs  of 
Temper  for  the  Faerie  Queen. 

It  was  during  the  thirty  years  which  preceded  the  ap- 
pearance of  Johnson's  Lives,  that  the  diction  and  versifica- 
tion of  English  poetry  were,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  word 
is  commonly  used,  most  correct.  Those  thirty  years  form 
the  most  deplorable  part  of  our  literary  history.  They 
have  bequeathed  to  us  scarcely  any  poetry  which  deserves 
to  be  remembered.  Two  or  three  hundred  lines  of  Gray, 
twice  as  many  of  Goldsmith,  a  few  stanzas  of  Beattie  and 
Collins,  a  few  strophes  of  Mason,  and  a  few  clever  pro- 
logues and  satires,  were  the  masterpieces  of  this  age  of 
consummate  excellence.  They  may  all  be  printed  in  one 
volume,  and  that  volume  would  be  by  no  means  a  volume 
of  extraordinary  merit.  It  would  contain  no  poetry  of  the 
highest  class,  and  little  which  could  be  placed  very  high 
in  the  second  class.  The  Paradise  Eegained,  or  Comus, 
would  outweigh  it  all. 

At  last,  when  poetry  had  fallen  into  such  utter  decay  that 
Mr.  Hayley  was  thought  a  great  poet,  it  began  to  appear 
that  the  excess  of  the  evil  was  about  to  work  the  cure. 
Men  became  tired  of  an  insipid  conformity  to  a  standard 
which  derived  no  authority  from  nature  or  reason.  A  shal- 
low criticism  had  taught  them  to  ascribe  a  superstitious 
value  to  the  spurious  correctness  of  poetasters.  A  deeper 
criticism  brought  them  back  to  the  free  correctness  of  the 
first  great  masters.  The  eternal  laws  of  poetry  regained 
their  power,  and  the  temporary  fashions  which  had  super- 
seded those  laws  went  after  the  wig  of  Lovelace  and  the 
hoop  of  Clarissa. 

It  was  in  a  cold  and  barren  season  that  the  seeds  of  that 
rich  harvest,  which  we  have  reaped,  were  first  sown.  While 
poetry  was  every  year  becoming  more  feeble  and  more  me- 
chanical, while  the  monotonous  versification  which  Pope  had 
introduced,  no  longer  redeemed  by  his  brilliant  wit  and  his 
compactness  of  expression,  palled  on  the  ear  of  the  public, 
the  great  works  of  the  dead  were  every  day  attracting  more 


MOORE'S   life  of  lord  BYRON.  339 

and  more  of  the  admiration  which  they  deserved.  The 
plays  of  Shakspeare  were  better  acted,  better  edited,  and  bet- 
ter known  than  they  had  ever  been.  Our  noble  old  ballads 
were  again  read  with  pleasure,  and  it  became  a  fashion  to 
imitate  them.  Many  of  the  imitations  were  altogether  con- 
temptible; but  they  showed  that  men  had  at  least  begun  to 
admire  the  excellence  which  they  could  not  rival.  A  lite- 
rary revolution  was  evidently  at  hand.  There  was  a  ferment 
in  the  minds  of  men,  a  vague  craving  for  something  new, 
a  disposition  to  hail  with  delight  any  thing  which  might  at 
first  sight  wear  the  appearance  of  originality.  A  reforming 
age  is  always  fertile  of  impostors.  The  same  excited  state 
of  public  feeling  which  produced  the  great  separation  from 
the  see  of  Kome,  produced  also  the  excesses  of  the  Anabap- 
tists. The  same  stir  in  the  public  mind  of  Europe  which 
overthrew  the  abuses  of  the  old  French  government,  pro- 
duced the  Jacobins  and  Theophilanthropists.  Macpherson 
and  the  Delia  Cruscans  were  to  the  true  reformers  of  English 
poetry  what  Cnipperdoling  was  to  Luther,  or  what  Clootz 
was  to  Turgot.  The  public  was  never  more  disposed  to  be- 
lieve  stories  without  evidence,  and  to  admire  books  without 
m^rit.  Any  thing  which  could  break  the  dull  monotony  of 
the  correct  school  was  acceptable. 

The  forerunner  of  the  great  restoration  of  our  literature 
was  Cowper.  His  literary  career  began  and  ended  at  nearly 
the  same  time  with  that  of  Alfieri.  A  parallel  between 
Alfieri  and  Cowper  may,  at  first  sight,  seem  as  unpromising 
as  that  which  a  loyal  Presbyterian  minister  is  said  to  have 
drawn,  in  1745,  between  George  the  Second  and  Enoch. 
It  may  seem  that  the  gentle,  shy,  melancholy  Calvinist, 
whose  spirit  had  been  broken  by  fagging  at  school,  who  had 
not  courage  to  earn  a  livelihood  by  reading  the  titles  of  bills 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  and  whose  favourite  associates  were 
a  blind  old  lady  and  an  evangelical  divine,  could  have  no- 
thing in  common  with  the  haughty,  ardent,  and  voluptuous 
nobleman,  the  horse-jockey,  the  libertine,  who  fought  Lord 
Ligonier  in  Hyde  Park,  and  robbed  the  Pretender  of  his 
queen.  But  though  the  private  lives  of  these  remarkable 
men  present  scarcely  any  points  of  resemblance,  their  lite- 
rary lives  bear  a  close  analogy  to  each  other.  They  both 
found  poetry  in  its  lowest  state  of  degradation,  feeble,  arti- 


340 

ficial,  and  altogether  nerveless.  They  both  possessed  pre- 
cisely the  talents  which  fitted  them  for  the  task  of  raising 
it  from  that  deep  abasement.  They  cannot^  in  strictness, 
be  called  great  poets.  They  had  not  in  any  very  high  de- 
gree the  creative  power, 

"  The  vision  and  the  faculty  divine  ;" 

but  they  had  great  vigour  of  thought,  great  warmth  of  feel- 
ing, and  what,  in  their  circumstance,  was  above  all  things 
important,  a  manliness  of  taste  which  approached  to  rough- 
ness. They  did  not  deal  in  mechanical  versification  and 
conventional  phrases.  They  wrote  concerning  things,  the 
thought  of  which  set  their  hearts  on  fire ;  and  thus  what  they 
wrote,  even  when  it  wanted  every  other  grace,  had  that  in- 
imitable grace  which  sincerity  and  strong  passion  impart  to 
the  rudest  and  most  homely  compositions.  Each  of  them 
sought  for  inspiration  in  a  noble  and  afi'ecting  subject,  fertile 
of  images,  which  had  not  yet  been  hackneyed.  Liberty  was 
the  muse  of  Alfieri ;  religion  was  the  muse  of  Cowper.  The 
same  truth  is  found  in  their  lighter  pieces.  They  were  not 
among  those  who  deprecated  the  severity  or  deplored  the 
absence  of  an  unreal  mistress  in  melodious  commonplaces. 
Instead  of  raving  about  imaginary  Chloes  and  Sylvias,  Cow- 
per wrote  of  Mrs.  Unwin's  knitting-needles.  The  only  love- 
verses  of  Alfieri  were  addressed  to  one  whom  he  truly  and 
passionately  loved.  "  Tutte  le  rime  amoroso  che  seguono,^^ 
says  he,  "  tutte  sono  per  essa,  e  ben  sue,  e  di  lei  solamente 
poiche  mai  d'altra  donna  per  certo  non  cantero.^^ 

These  great  men  were  not  free  from  afl"ectation ;  but  their 
afi'ectation  was  directly  opposed  to  the  affectation  which 
generally  prevailed.  Each  of  them  has  expressed  in  strong 
and  bitter  language  the  contempt  which  he  felt  for  the  effe- 
minate poetasters  who  were  in  fashion  both  in  England  and 
Italy.     Cowper  complains  that 

<'  Manner  is  all  in  all,  whate'er  is  writ, 
The  substitute  for  genius,  taste,  and  wit." 

He  praised  Pope;  yet  he  regretted  that  Pope  had 

*'  Made  poetry  a  mere  mechanic  art, 
And  every  warbler  had  his  tune  by  heart." 


MOORE'S  life  of  lord  BYRON.         341 

Alfieri  speaks  with  similar  scorn  of  the  tragedies  of  his  pre- 
decessors. '^  Mi  cadevano  dalle  mani  per  la  languidezza, 
trivialta  e  prolissitc\  dei  modi  e  del  verso,  senza  parlare  poi 
della  snervatezza  dei  pensieri.  Or  perche  mai  questa  nostra 
divina  lingua,  si  maschia  anco,  ed  energica,  e  feroce,  in 
bocca  di  Dante,  dovra  elle  farci  cosi  sbiadata  ed  eunuca  nel 
dialogo  tragico.^^ 

To  men  thus  sick  of  the  languid  manner  of  their  contem- 
poraries, ruggedness  seemed  a  venial  fault,  or  rather  a  posi- 
tive merit.  In  their  hatred  of  meretricious  ornament,  and 
of  what  Cowper  calls  '^  creamy  smoothness,^'  they  erred  on 
the  opposite  side.  Their  style  was  too  austere,  their  versi- 
fication too  harsh.  It  is  not  easy,  however,  to  overrate  the 
service  which  they  rendered  to  literature.  Their  merit  is 
rather  that  of  demolition  than  that  of  construction.  The 
intrinsic  value  of  their  poems  is  considerable ;  but  the  exam- 
ple which  they  set  of  mutiny  against  an  absurd  system  was 
invaluable.  The  part  which  they  performed  was  rather  that 
of  Moses  than  that  of  Joshua.  They  opened  the  house  of 
bondage,  but  they  did  not  enter  the  promised  land. 

During  the  twenty  years  which  followed  the  death  of 
Cowper,  the  revolution  in  English  poetry  was  fully  con- 
summated. None  of  the  writers  of  this  period,  not  even 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  contributed  so  much  to  the  consummation 
as  Lord  Byron.  Yet  he.  Lord  Byron,  contributed  to  it 
unwillingly,  and  with  constant  self-reproach  and  shame. 
All  his  tastes  and  inclinations  led  him  to  take  part  with  the 
school  of  poetry  which  was  going  out,  against  the  school 
which  was  coming  in.  Of  Pope  himself  he  spoke  with 
extravagant  admiration.  He  did  not  venture  directly  to  say 
that  the  little  man  of  Twickenham  was  a  greater  poet  than 
Shakspeare  or  Milton ;  but  he  hinted  pretty  clearly  that 
he  thought  so.  Of  his  contemporaries,  scarcely  any  had  so 
much  of  his  admiration  as  Mr.  Gifford,  who,  considered  as  a 
poet,  was  merely  Pope,  without  Pope's  wit  and  fancy;  and 
whose  satires  are  decidedly  inferior  in  vigour  and  poignancy 
to  the  very  imperfect  juvenile  performance  of  Lord  Byron 
himself.  He  now  and  then  praised  Mr.  Wordsworth  and 
Mr.  Coleridge,  but  ungraciously  and  without  cordiality. 
When  he  attacked  them,  he  brought  his  whole  soul  to  the 
work.  Of  the  most  elaborate  of  Mr.  Wordsworth's  poems 
29* 


342        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

lie  could  find  nothing  to  say^  but  that  it  was  "  clumsy,  and 
frowsy,  and  his  aversion/^  Peter  Bell  excited  his  spleen 
to  such  a  degree  that  he  apostrophized  the  shades  of  Pope 
and  Dryden,  and  demanded  of  them  whether  it  were  pos- 
sible that  such  trash  could  evade  contempt !  In  his  heart 
he  thought  his  own  Pilgrimage  of  Harold  inferior  to  his 
Imitation  of  Horace's  Art  of  Poetry — a  feeble  echo  of  Pope 
and  Johnson.  This  insipid  performance  he  repeatedly  de- 
signed to  publish,  and  was  withheld  only  by  the  solicitations 
of  his  friends.  He  has  distinctly  declared  his  approbation 
of  the  unities,  the  most  absurd  laws  by  which  genius  was 
ever  held  in  servitude.  In  one  of  his  works,  we  think  in 
his  Letter  to  Mr.  Bowles,  he  compares  the  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century  to  the  Parthenon,  and  that  of  the  nine- 
teenth to  a  Turkish  mosque ;  and  boasts  that,  though  he 
had  assisted  his  contemporaries  in  building  their  grotesque 
and  barbarous  edifice,  he  had  never  joined  them  in  defacing 
the  remains  of  a  chaster  and  more  graceful  architecture.  In 
another  letter,  he  compares  the  change  which  had  recently 
passed  on  English  poetry  to  the  decay  of  Latin  poetry  after 
the  Augustan  age.  In  the  time  of  Pope,  he  tells  his  friend, 
it  was  all  Horace  with  us.     It  is  all  Claudian  now. 

For  the  great  old  masters  of  the  art  he  had  no  very  en- 
thusiastic admiration.  In  his  Letter  to  Mr.  Bowles  he  uses 
expressions  which  clearly  indicate  that  he  preferred  Pope's 
Iliad  to  the  original.  Mr.  Moore  confesses  that  his  friend 
was  no  very  fervent  admirer  of  Shakspeare.  Of  all  the 
poets  of  the  first  class.  Lord  Byron  seems  to  have  admired 
Dante  and  Milton  most.  Yet,  in  the  fourth  canto  of  Childe 
Harold,  he  places  Tasso,  a  writer  not  merely  inferior  to 
them,  but  of  quite  a  different  order  of  mind,  on  at  least  a 
footing  of  equality  with  them.  Hr.  Hunt  is,  we  suspect, 
quite  correct  in  saying  that  Lord  Byron  could  see  little  or 
no  merit  in  Spenser. 

But  Lord  Byron  the  critic,  and  Lord  Byron  the  poet,  were 
two  very  difierent  men.  The  eifects  of  his  theory  may  in- 
deed often  be  traced  in  his  practice.  But  his  disposition  led 
him  to  accommodate  himself  to  the  literary  taste  of  the  age 
in  which  he  lived ;  and  his  talents  would  have  enabled  him 
to  accommodate  himself  to  the  taste  of  any  age.  Though 
he  said  much  of  his  contempt  for  men,  and  though  he 


MOORE's   life   W^P   Z.ORD   BYRON.  ,43 

boasted  that,  amidst  all  the  inconstancy  of  fortune  and  of 
fame,  he  was  all-sufficient  to  himself,  his  literary  career  in- 
dicated nothing  of  that  lonely  and  unsocial  pride  which  he 
affected.  We  cannot  conceive  him,  like  Milton  or  Words- 
worth, defying  the  criticisms  of  his  contemporaries,  retort- 
ing their  scorn,  and  labouring  on  a  poem  in  the  full  assu- 
rance that  it  would  be  unpopular,  and  in  the  full  assurance 
that  it  would  be  immortal.  He  has  said,  by  the  mouth 
of  one  of  his  heroes,  in  speaking  of  political  greatness,  that 
"  he  must  serve  who  gain  would  sway;"  and  this  he  assigns 
as  a  reason  for  not  entering  into  political  life.  He  did  not 
consider  that  the  sway  which  he  exercised  in  literature  had 
been  purchased  by  servitude — by  the  sacrifice  of  his  own 
taste  to  the  taste  of  the  public. 

He  was  the  creature  of  his  age ;  and  wherever  he  had 
lived,  he  would  have  been  the  creature  of  his  age.  Under 
Charles  the  First,  he  would  have  t^en  more  quaint  than 
Donne.  Under  Charles  the  Second,  the  rants  of  his  rhyming 
plays  would  have  pitted  it,  boxed  it,  and  galleried  it,  with 
those  of  any  Bayes  or  Bilboa.  Under  George  the  First,  the 
monotonous  smoothness  of  his  versification  and  the  terseness 
of  his  expression  would  have  made  Pope  himself  envious. 

As  it  was,  he  was  the  man  of  the  last  thirteen  years  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  of  the  first  twenty-three  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  He  belonged  half  to  the  old 
and  half  to  the  new  school  of  poetry.  His  personal  taste 
led  him  to  the  former,  his  thirst  of  fame  to  the  latter ;  his 
talents  were  equally  suited  to  both.  His  fame  was  a  com- 
mon ground,  on  which  the  zealots  of  both  sides — G-ifford,  for 
example,  and  Shelley — might  meet.  He  was  the  repre- 
sentative, not  of  either  literary  party,  but  of  both  at  once, 
and  of  their  conflict,  and  of  the  victory  by  which  that  conflict 
was  terminated.  His  poetry  fills  and  measures  the  whole 
of  the  vast  interval  through  which  our  literature  has  moved 
^ince  the  time  of  Johnson.  It  touches  the  Essay  on  Man 
at  the  one  extremity  and  the  Excursion  at  the  other. 

There  are  several  parallel  instances  in  literary  history. 
Voltaire,  for  example,  was  the  connecting  link  between  the 
France  of  Louis  the  Fourteenth  and  the  France  of  Louis 
the  Sixteenth — between  Racine  and  Boileau  on  the  one  side, 
and  Condorcet  and  Beaumarchais  on  the  other.     He,  like 


844 

Lord  Bjron,  put  himself  at  tlie  head  of  an  intellectual  revo- 
lution, dreading  it  all  the  time,  murmuring  at  it,  sneering  at 
it,  yet  choosing  rather  to  move  before  his  age  in  any  direc- 
tion than  to  be  left  behind  and  forgotten.  Dryden  was  the 
connecting  link  between  the  literature  of  the  age  of  James 
the  First  and  the  literature  of  the  age  of  Anne.  Oromazdes 
and  Arimanes  fought  for  him — Arimanes  carried  him  off; 
but  his  heart  was  to  the  last  with  Oromazdes.  Lord  Byron 
was  in  the  same  manner  the  mediator  between  two  genera- 
tions, between  two  hostile  poetical  sects.  Though  always 
sneering  at  Mr.  "Wordsworth,  he  was  yet,  though  perhaps 
unconsciously,  the  interpreter  between  Mr.  Wordsworth  and 
the  multitude.  In  the  Lyrical  Ballads  and.  the  -Excursion, 
Mr.  Wordsworth  appeared  as  the  high-priest  of  a  worship  of 
which  Nature  was  the  idol.  No  poems  have  ever  indicated 
so  exquisite  a  perception  of  the  beauty  of  the  outer  world, 
or  so  passionate  a  love  and  reverence  for  that  beauty.  Yet 
they  were  not  popular ;  and  it  is  not  likely  that  they  ever 
will  be  popular  as  the  works  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  are  popu- 
lar. The  feeling  which  pervaded  them  was  too  deep  for 
general  sympathy;  their  style  was  often  too  mysterious  for 
general  comprehension.  They  made  a  few  esoteric  disciples, 
and  many  scoffers.  Lord  Byron  founded  what  may  be  called 
an  exoteric  Lake  school  of  poetry ;  and  all  the  readers  of 
poetry  in  England,  we  might  say  in  Europe,  hastened  to  sit 
at  his  feet.  What  Mr.  Wordsworth  had  said  like  a  recluse, 
Lord  Byron  said  like  a  man  of  the  world,  with  less  pro- 
found feeling,  but  with  more  perspicuity,  energy,  and  con- 
ciseness. We  would  refer  our  readers  to  the  last  two 
cantos  of  Childe  Harold  and  to  Manfred,  in  proof  of  these 
observations. 

Lord  Byron,  like  Mr.  Wordsworth,  had  nothing  dramatic 
in  his  genius.  He  was,  indeed,  the  reverse  of  a  great  dra- 
matist— the  very  antithesis  to  a  great  dramatist.  All  his 
characters — Harold  looking  back  on  the  western  sky,  from, 
which  his  country  and  the  sun  are  receding  together ;  the 
Giaour,  standing  apart  in  the  gloom  of  the  side-aisle,  and 
casting  a  haggard  scowl  from  under  his  long  hood  at  the 
crucifix  and  the  censer;  Conrad,  leaning  on  his  sword  by 
the  watch-tower;  Lara,  smiling  on  the  dancers;  Alp,  gazing 
steadily  on  the  fatal  cloud  as  it  passes  before  the  moon; 


Moore's  life  of  lord  byron.  345 

Manfred,  wandering  among  the  precipices  of  Berne;  Azo, 
on  the  judgment-seat;  Ugo,  at  the  bar;  Lambro,  frowning 
on  the  siesta  of  his  daughter  and  Juan ;  Cain,  presenting 
his  unacceptable  offering— all  are  essentially  the  same.  The 
varieties  are  varieties  merely  of  age,  situation,  and  costume. 
If  ever  Lord  Byron  attempted  to  exhibit  men  of  a  different 
kind,  he  always  made  them  either  insipid  or  unnatural. 
Selim  is  nothing.  Bonnivart  is  nothing.  Don  Juan,  in  the 
first  and  best  cantos,  is  a  feeble  copy  of  the  Page  in  the 
Marriage  of  Figaro.  Johnson,  the  man  whom  Juan  meets 
in  the  slave-market,  is  a  most  striking  failure.  How  dif- 
ferently would  Sir  Walter  Scott  have  drawn  a  bluff,  fearless 
Englishman  in  such  a  situation  !  The  portrait  would  have 
seemed  to  walk  out  of  the  canvas. 

Sardanapalus  is  more  hardly  drawn  than  any  dramatic 
personage  that  we  can  remember.  His  heroism  and  his 
effeminacy,  his  contempt  of  death,  and  his  dread  of  a 
weighty  helmet,  his  kingly  resolution  to  be  seen  in  the  fore- 
most ranks,  and  the  anxiety  with  which  he  calls  for  a  look- 
ing-glass, that  he  may  be  seen  to  advantage,  are  contrasted 
with  all  the  point  of  Juvenal.  Indeed,  the  hint  of  the  cha- 
racter seems  to  have  be>n  taken  from  what  Juvenal  says  of 
Otho,— 

"Speculum  civilis  sarcina  belli. 
Nimirum  summi  duels  est  occidere  Galbam. 
Et  curare  cutem  ;  summi  constantia  civis 
Bebriaci  campo  spolium  affectare  Palati, 
Et  pressum  in  faciem  digitis  extendere  panem." 

These  are  excellent  lines  in  a  satire.  But  it  is  not  the 
business  of  the  dramatist  to  exhibit  characters  in  this  sharp, 
antithetical  way.  It  is  not  in  this  way  that  Shakspeare 
makes  Prince  Hal  rise  from  the  rake  of  Eastcheap  into  the 
hero  of  Shrewsbury,  and  sink  again  into  the  rake  of  East- 
cheap.  It  is  not  thus  that  Shakspeare  has  exhibited  the 
union  of  effeminacy  and  valour  in  Antony.  A  dramatist 
cannot  commit  a  greater  error  than  that  of  following  those 
pointed  descriptions  of  character  in  which  satirists  and  his- 
torians indulge  so  much.  It  is  by  rejecting  what  is  natural 
that  satirists  and  historians  produce  these  striking  cha- 
racters.    Their  great  object  generally  is  to  ascribe  to  every 


3d6  MACAUIiAY's   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

man  as  many  contradictory  qualities  as  possible;  and  this 
is  an  object  easily  attained.  By  judicious  selections  and 
judicious  exaggeration,  the  intellect  and  the  disposition  of 
any  human  being  might  be  described  as  being  made  up  of 
nothing  but  startling  contrasts.  If  the  dramatist  attempts 
to  create  a  being  answering  to  one  of  these  descriptions, 
he  fails ;  because  he  reverses  an  imperfect  analytical  pro- 
cess. He  produces,  not  a  man,  but  a  personified  epigram. 
Very  eminent  writers  have  fallen  into  this  snare.  Ben 
Johnson  has  given  us  an  Hermogenes  taken  from  the  lively 
lines  of  Horace ;  but  the  inconsistency  which  is  so  amusing 
in  the  satire  appears  unnatural  and  disgusts  us  in  the  play. 
Sir  Walter  Scott  has  committed  a  far  more  glaring  error  of 
the  same  kind,  in  the  novel  of  Peveril.  Admiring,  as  every 
reader  must  admire,  the  keen  and  vigorous  lines  in  which 
Dryden  satirized  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  he  attempted 
to  make  a  Duke  of  Buckingham  to  suit  them — a  real  living 
Zimri;  and  he  made,  not  a  man,  but  the  most  grotesque 
of  all  monsters.  A  writer  who  should  attempt  to  introduce 
into  a  play  or  a  novel  such  a  Wharton  as  the  Wharton  of 
Pope,  or  a  Lord  Hervey  answering  to  Sporus,  would  fail  in 
the  same  manner. 

But  to  return  to  Lord  Byron :  his  women,  like  his  men, 
are  all  of  one  breed.  Haidee  is  a  half-savage  and  girlish 
Julia;  Julia  is  a  civilized  and  matronly  Haidee.  Leila  is 
a  wedded  Zuleika — Zuleika  a  virgin  Leila.  Gulnare  and 
Medora  appear  to  have  been  intentionally  opposed  to  each 
other ;  yet  the  difference  is  a  difference  of  situation  only. 
A  slight  change  of  circumstance  would,  it  should  seem,  have 
sent  Gulnare  to  the  lute  of  Medora,  and  armed  Medora  with 
the  dagger  of  Gulnare. 

It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  Lord  Byron  could  ex- 
hibit only  one  man  and  only  one  woman — a  man  proud, 
moody,  cynical,  with  defiance  on  his  brow,  and  misery  in 
his  heart;  a  scorner  of  his  kind,  implacable  in  revenge,  yet 
capable  of  deep  and  strong  affection ; — a  woman  all  softness 
and  gentleness,  loving  to  caress  and  to  be  caressed,  but  capa- 
ble of  being  transformed  by  love  into  a  tigress. 

Even  these  two  characters,  his  only  two  characters,  he 
could  not  exhibit  dramatically.  He  exhibited  them  in  the 
manner,  not  of  Shakspeare,  but  of  Clarendon.     He  ana- 


MOORE^S  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON.        347 

iyzed  tliem.  He  made  them  analyze  themselves,  but  he  did  not 
make  them  show  themselves.  He  tells  us,  for  example,  in 
many  lines  of  great  force  and  spirit,  that  the  speech 
of  Lara  was  bitterly  sarcastic,  that  he  talked  little  of 
his  travels,  that  if  much  questioned  about  them,  his  an- 
swers became  short,  and  his  brow  gloomy.  But  we  have 
none  of  Lara's  sarcastic  speeches,  or  short  answers.  It  is 
not  thus  that  the  great  masters  of  human  nature  have  por- 
trayed human  beings.  Homer  never  tells  us  that  Nestor 
loved  to  tell  long  stories  about  his  youth ;  Shakspeare  never 
tells  us  that  in  the  mind  of  lago  every  thing  that  is  beauti- 
ful and  endearing  was  associated  with  some  filthy  and  de- 
basing idea. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  the  tendency  which  the  dialogue 
of  Lord  Byron  always  has  to  lose  its  character  of  dialogue, 
and  to  become  soliloquy.  The  scenes  between  Manfred  and 
the  Chamois-hunter,  between  Manfred  and  the  Witch  of  the 
Alps,  between  Manfred  and  the  Abbot,  are  instances  of  this 
tendency.  Manfred,  after  a  few  unimportant  speeches,  has 
all  the  talk  to  himself.  The  other  interlocutors  are  nothing 
more  than  good  listeners.  They  drop  an  occasional  ques- 
tion, or  ejaculation,  which  sets  Manfred  off  again  on  the 
inexhaustible  topic  of  his  personal  feelings.  If  we  examine 
the  fine  passages  in  Lord  Byron's  dramas,  the  description  of 
E  3me,  for  example,  in  Manfred,  the  description  of  a  Vene- 
tian revel  in  Marino  Faliero,  the  dying  invective  which  the 
old  Doge  pronounces  against  Venice,  we  shall  find  there  is 
nothing  dramatic  in  them;  that  they  derive  none  of  their 
effect  from  the  character  or  situation  of  the  speaker;  and 
that  they  would  have  been  as  fine,  or  finer,  if  they  had  been 
published  as  fragments  of  blank  verse  by  Lord  Byron. 
There  is  scarcely  a  speech  in  Shakspeare  of  which  the  same 
could  be  said.  No  skilful  reader  of  the  plays  of  Shak- 
speare can  endure  to  see  what  are  called  the  fine  things  taken 
out,  under  the  name  of  ^^ Beauties"  or  of  "Elegant  Ex- 
tracts;" or  to  hear  any  single  passage — "To  be  or  not  to 
be,"  for  example,  quoted  as  a  sample  of  the  great  poet. 
"  To  be  or  not  to  be"  has  merit  undoubtedly  as  a  composi- 
tion. It  would  have  merit  if  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  chorus. 
But  its  merit  as  a  composition  vanishes  when  compared 
with  its  merit  as  belonging  to  Hamlet.     It  is  not  too  much 


348        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

to  say  that  the  great  plays  of  Shakspeare  would  lose  less 
by  being  deprived  of  all  the  passages  which  are  commonly 
called  the  fine  passages,  than  those  passages  lose  by  being 
read  separately  from  the  play.  This  is  perhaps  the  highest 
praise  which  can  be  given  to  a  dramatist. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  there  is, 
in  all  Lord  Byron's  plays,  a  single  remarkable  passage 
which  owes  any  portion  of  its  interest  or  effect  to  its  con- 
nection with  the  characters  or  the  action.  He  has  written 
only  one  scene,  as  far  as  we  can  recollect,  which  is  dra- 
matic even  in  manner — the  scene  between  Lucifer  and  Cain. 
The  conference  in  that  scene  is  animated,  and  each  of  the 
interlocutors  has  a  fair  share  of  it.  But  this  scene,  when 
examined,  will  be  found  to  be  a  confirmation  of  our  remarks. 
It  is  a  dialogue  only  in  form.  It  is  a  soliloquy  in  essence. 
It  is  in  reality  a  debate  carried  on  within  one  single, 
unquiet,  and  skeptical  mind.  The  questions  and  the  an- 
swers, the  objections  and  the  solutions,  all  belong  to  the 
same  character. 

A  writer  who  showed  so  little  of  dramatic  skill  in  works 
professedly  dramatic  was  not  likely  to  write  narrative  with 
dramatic  effect.  Nothing  could  indeed  be  more  rude  and 
careless  than  the  structure  of  his  narrative  poems.  He 
seems  to  have  thought,  with  the  hero  of  the  Rehearsal,  that 
the  plot  was  good  for  nothing  but  to  bring  in  fine  things. 
His  two  longest  works,  Childe  Harold  and  Don  Juan,  have 
no  plan  whatever.  Either  of  them  might  have  been  ex- 
tended to  any  length,  or  cut  short  at  any  point.  The  state 
in  which  the  Griaour  appears  illustrates  the  manner  in  which 
all  his  poems  were  constructed.  They  are  all,  like  the 
Giaour,  collections  of  fragments;  and,  though  there  may  be 
no  empty  spaces  marked  by  asterisks,  it  is  still  easy  to  per- 
ceive, by  the  clumsiness  of  the  joining,  where  the  parts,  for 
the  sake  of  which  the  whole  was  composed,  end  and  begin. 

It  was  in  description  and  meditation  that  he  excelled. 
^^ Description,'^  as  he  said  in  Don  Juan,  "was  his  forte." 
His  manner  is  indeed  peculiar,  and  is  almost  unequalled — 
rapid,  sketchy,  full  of  vigour;  the  selection  happy;  the 
strokes  few  and  bold.  In  spite  of  the  reverence  which  we 
feel  for  the  genius  of  Mr.  Wordsworth,  we  cannot  but  think 
that  the  minuteness  of  his  descriptions  often  diminishes 


MOORE^S  LIFE  OF  LORD  BYRON.         349 

their  effect.  He  has  accustomed  himself  to  gaze  on  nature 
with  the  eye  of  a  lover — to  dwell  on  every  feature,  and  to 
mark  every  change  of  aspect.  Those  beauties  which  strike 
the  most  negligent  observer,  and  those  which  only  a  close 
attention  discovers,  are  equally  familiar  to  him,  and  are 
equally  prominent  in  his  poetry.  The  proverb  of  old  Hesiod, 
that  half  is  often  more  than  the  whole,  is  eminently  appli- 
cable to  description.  The  policy  of  the  Dutch,  who  cut 
down  most  of  the  precious  trees  in  the  Spice  Islands,  in 
order  to  raise  the  value  of  what  remained,  was  a  policy 
which  poets  would  do  well  to  imitate.  It  was  a  policy 
which  no  poet  understood  better  than  Lord  Byron.  What- 
ever his  faults  might  be,  he  was  never,  while  his  mind  re- 
tained its  vigour,  accused  of  prolixity. 

His  descriptions,  great  as  was  their  intrinsic  merit,  de- 
rived their  principal  interest  from  the  feeling  which  always 
mingled  with  them.  He  was  himself  the  beginning,  the 
middle,  and  the  end  of  all  his  own  poetry,  the  hero  of  every 
tale,  the  chief  object  in  every  landscape.  Harold,  Lara, 
Manfred,  and  a  crowd  of  other  characters,  were  universally 
considered  merely  as  loose  incognitos  of  IByron;  and  there 
is  every  reason  to  believe  that  he  meant  them  to  be  so  con- 
sidered. The  wonders  of  the  outer  world,  the  Tagus,  with 
the  mighty  fleets  of  England  riding  on  its  bosom,  the  towers 
of  Cintra  overhanging  the  shaggy  forest  of  cork-trees  and 
willows,  the  glaring  marble  of  Pentelicus,  the  banks  of  the 
Rhine,  the  glaiers  of  Clarens,  the  sweet  Lake  of  Leman, 
the  dell  of  Egeria,  with  its  summer-birds  and  rustling 
lizards,  the  shapeless  ruins  of  Eome,  overgrown  with  ivy 
and  wall-flowers,  the  stars,  the  sea,  the  mountains — all 
were  mere  accessaries — the  background  to  one  dark  and 
melancholy  figure. 

Never  had  any  writer  so  vast  a  command  of  the  whole 
eloquence  of  scorn,  misanthropy,  and  despair.  That  Marah 
was  never  dry.  No  art  could  sweeten,  no  draughts  could 
exhaust  its  perennial  waters  of  bitterness.  Never  was 
there  such  variety  in  monotony  as  that  of  Byron.  From 
maniac  laughter  to  piercing  lamentation,  there  was  not  a 
single  note  of  human  anguish  of  which  he  was  not  master. 
Year  after  year,  and  month  after  month,  he  continued  to 
repeat  that  to  be  wretched  is  the  destiny  of  all;  that  to  be  emi- 

VoL.  L— 30 


850        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

neutly  wretched,  is  the  destiny  of  the  eminent;  that  all  the 
desires  by  which  we  are  cursed  lead  alike  to  misery; — if 
they  are  not  gratified,  to  the  misery  of  disappointment;  if 
they  are  gratified,  to  the  misery  of  satiety.  His  principal 
heroes  are  men  who  have  arrived  by  different  roads  at  the 
same  goal  of  despair,  who  are  sick  of  life,  who  are  at  war 
with  society,  who  are  supported  in  their  anguish  only  by  an 
unconquerable  pride,  resembling  that  of  Prometheus  on  the 
rock,  or  of  Satan  in  the  burning  marl ;  who  can  master  their 
agonies  by  the  force  of  their  will,  and  who,  to  the  last,  defy 
the  whole  power  of  earth  and  heaven.  He  always  described 
himself  as  a  man  of  the  same  kind  with  his  favourite  cre- 
ations, as  a  man  whose  heart  had  been  withered,  whose 
capacity  for  happiness  was  gone,  and  could  not  be  restored; 
but  whose  invincible  spirit  dared  the  worst  that  could  befall 
him  here  or  hereafter. 

How  much  of  this  morbid  feeling  sprung  from  an  original 
disease  of  mind,  how  much  from  real  misfortune,  how  much 
from  the  nervousness  of  dissipation,  how  much  of  it  was 
fanciful,  how  much  of  it  was  merely  affected,  it  is  im- 
possible for  us,  and  would  probably  have  been  impossible 
for  the  most  intimate  friends  of  Lord  Byron  to  decide. 
Whether  there  ever  existed,  or  can  ever  exist,  a  person  an- 
swering to  the  description  which  he  gave  of  himself,  may 
be  doubted :  but  that  he  was  not  such  a  person  is  beyond 
all  doubt.  It  is  ridiculous  to  imagine  that  a  man  whose 
mind  was  really  imbued  with  scorn  of  his  fellow-creatures 
would  have  published  three  or  four  books  every  year  in 
order  to  tell  them  so ;  or  that  a  man,  who  could  say  with 
truth  that  he  neither  sought  sympathy  nor  needed  it,  would 
have  admitted  all  Europe  to  hear  his  farewell  to  his  wife,  and 
his  blessings  on  his  child.  In  the  second  canto  of  Childe 
Harold,  he  tells  us  that  he  is  insensible  to  fame  and  obloquy : 

**  El  may  such  contest  now  the  spirit  move, 
Which  heeds  nor  keen  reproof  nor  partial  praise." 

Yet  we  know,  on  the  best  evidence,  that  a  day  or  two  be- 
fore he  published  these  lines,  he  was  greatly,  indeed  child- 
ishly, elated  by  the  compliments  paid  to  his  maiden  speech 
in  the  House  of  Lords. 


Moore's  life  op  lord  byron.      351 

Wb  are  far,  however,  from  thinking  that  his  sadness  was 
aitogeliicr  feigned.  He  was  naturally  a  man  of  great  sen- 
sibility ;  he  had  been  ill-educated ;  his  feelings  had  been 
early  exposed  to  sharp  trials ;  he  had  been  crossed  in  his 
boyish  love ;  he  had  been  mortified  by  the  failure  of  his 
first  literary  efi"orts;  he  was  straitened  in  pecuniary  cir- 
cumstances ;  he  was  unfortunate  in  his  domestic  relations ; 
the  public  treated  him  with  cruel  injustice ;  his  health  and 
spirits  suffered  from  his  dissipated  habits  of  life ;  he  was, 
on  the  whole,  an  unhappy  man.  He  early  discovered  that, 
by  parading  his  unhappiness  before  the  multitude,  he  ex- 
cited an  unrivalled  interest.  The  world  gave  him  every 
encouragement  to  talk  about  his  mental  sufferings.  The 
effect  which  his  first  confessions  produced  induced  him  to 
affect  much  that  he  did  not  feel ;  and  the  affectation  pro- 
bably reacted  on  his  feelings.  How  far  the  character  in 
which  he  exhibited  himself  was  genuine,  and  how  far 
theatrical,  would  probably  have  puzzled  himself  to  say. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  remarkable  man  owed 
the  vast  influence  which  he  exercised  over  his  contempo- 
raries at  least  as  much  to  his  gloomy  egotism  as  to  the 
real  power  of  his  poetry.  We  never  could  very  clearly 
understand  how  it  is  that  egotism,  so  unpopular  in  conver- 
sation, should  be  so  popular  in  writing }  or  how  it  is  that 
men  who  affect  in  their  compositions  qualities  and  feelings 
which  they  have  not,  impose  so  much  more  easily  on  their 
contemporaries  than  on  posterity.  The  interest  which  the 
loves  of  Petrarch  excited  in  his  own  time,  and  the  pitying 
fondness  with  which  half  Europe  looked  upon  Rousseau, 
are  well  known.  To  readers  of  our  time,  the  love  of  Pe- 
trarch seems  to  have  been  love  of  that  kind  which  breaks  no 
hearts ;  and  the  sufferings  of  Rousseau  to  have  deserved 
laughter  rather  than  pity — to  have  been  partly  counter- 
feited, and  partly  the  consequences  of  his  own  perverseness 
and  vanity. 

What  our  grandchildren  may  think  of  the  character  of 
Lord  Byron  as  exhibited  in  his  poetry,  we  will  not  pretend 
to  guess.  It  is  certain,  that  the  interest  which  he  excited 
during  his  life  is  without  a  parallel  in  literary  history. 
The  feeling  with  which  young  readers  of  poetry  regarded 
him    can   be   conceived   only  by   those  who   have   expe- 


352  MACAULAY^S  MISCELLANEOUS  WRITINGS. 

rienced  it.  To  people  who  are  unacquainted  with  the  real 
calamity,  ^^  nothing  is  so  dainty  sweet  as  lovely  melan- 
choly/^ This  faint  image  of  sorrow  has  in  all  ages  been 
considered  by  young  gentlemen  as  an  agreeable  excitement. 
Old  gentlemen  and  middle-aged  gentlemen  have  so  many 
real  causes  of  sadness,  that  they  are  rarely  inclined  '^  to 
be  as  sad  as  night  only  for  wantonness.''^  Indeed  they 
want  the  power  almost  as  much  as  the  inclination.  We 
know  very  few  persons  engaged  in  active  life,  who  even  if 
they  were  to  procure  stools  to  be  melancholy  upon,  and  were 
to  sit  down  with  all  the  premeditation  of  Master  Stephen, 
would  be  able  to  enjey  much  of  what  somebody  calls  "the 
ecstasy  of  wo.^^ 

Among  that  large  class  of  young  persons  whose  reading 
is  almost  entirely  confined  to  works  of  imagination,  the 
popularity  of  Lord  Byron  was  unbounded.  They  bought 
pictures  of  him,  they  treasured  up  the  smallest  relics  of 
him ;  they  learned  his  poems  by  heart,  and  did  their  best 
to  write  like  him,  and  to  look  like  him.  Many  of  them 
practised  at  the  glass,  in  the  hope  of  catching  the  curl  of 
the  upper  lip,  and  the  scowl  of  the  brow,  which  appear  in 
some  of  his  portraits.  A  few  discarded  their  neckcloths, 
in  imitation  of  their  great  leader.  For  some  years,  the  Mi- 
nerva press  sent  forth  no  novel  without  a  mysterious,  un- 
happy, Lara-like  peer.  The  number  of  hopeful  under- 
graduates and  medical  students  who  became  things  of  dark 
imaginings,  on  whom  the  freshness  of  the  heart  ceased  to 
fall  like  dew,  whose  passions  had  consumed  themselves  to 
dust,  and  to  whom  the  relief  of  tears  was  denied,  passes  all 
calculation.  This  was  not  the  worst.  There  was  created 
in  the  minds  of  many  of  these  enthusiasts  a  pernicious  and 
absurd  association  between  intellectual  power  and  moral 
depravity.  From  the  poetry  of  Lord  Byron  they  drew  a 
system  of  ethics,  compounded  of  misanthropy  and  volup- 
tuousness;  a  system  in  which  the  two  great  command- 
ments were,  to  hate  your  neighbour,  and  to  love  your  neigh- 
bour's wife. 

This  affectation  has  passed  away ;  and  a  few  more  years 
will  destroy  whatever  yet  remains  of  that  magical  potency 
which  once  belonged  to  the  name  of  Byron.  To  us  he  is 
still  a  man,  young,  noble  and  unhappy.     To  our  children 


Moore's  life  of  lord  byron.       353 

he  will  be  merely  a  writer ;  and  their  impartial  judgment 
will  appoint  his  place  among  writers,  without  regard  to  his 
rank,  or  to  his  private  history.  That  his  jDoetry  will  un- 
dergo a  severe  sifting ;  that  much  of  what  has  been  admired 
by  his  contemporaries  will  be  rejected  as  worthless,  we 
have  little  doubt.  But  we  have  as  little  doubt,  that,  after 
the  closest  scrutiny,  there  will  still  remain  much  that  can 
only  perish  with  the  English  language. 


m® 


|nat[n!i]'ig  d^Mtion  nt  t[re  pilgrim's 
^rngW00.* 

[Ediriburgli  Eeview.] 

This  is  an  eminently  beautiful  and  splendid  edition  of  a 
book  which  well  deserves  all  that  the  printer  and  the  en- 
graver can  do  for  it.  The  life  of  Bunyan  is,  of  course,  not 
a  performance  which  can  add  much  to  the  literary  reputa- 
tion of  such  a  writer  as  Mr.  Southey.  But  it  is  written  in 
excellent  English,  and,  for  the  most  part,  in  an  excellent 
spirit.  Mr.  Southey  propounds,  we  need  not  say,  many 
opinions  from  which  we  altogether  dissent ;  and  his  at- 
tempts to  excuse  the  odious  persecution  to  which  Bunyan 
was  subjected  have  sometimes  moved  our  indignation. 
But  we  will  avoid  this  topic.  We  are  at  present  much  more 
inclined  to  join  in  paying  homage  to  the  genius  of  a  great 
man,  than  to  engage  in  a  controversy  concerning  church 
government  and  toleration. 

We  must  not  pass  without  notice  the  engravings  with 
which  this  beautiful  volume  is  decorated.  Some  of  Mr. 
Heath's  woodcuts  are  admirably  designed  and  executed. 
Mr.  Martin's  illustrations  do  not  please  us  quite  so  well. 
His  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  is  not  that  Yalley  of 
the  Shadow  of  Death  which  Bunyan  imagined.  At  all 
events,  it  is  not  that  dark  and  horrible  glen  which  has  from 
childhood  been  in  our  mind's  eye.  The  valley  is  a  cavern  : 
the  quagmire  is  a  lake  :  the  straight  path  runs  zigzag ;  and 
Christian  appears  like  a  speck  in  the  darkness  of  the  im- 


*  The  Pilgrim^ s  Progress,  with  a  Life  of  John  Bunyan.  By  Robert 
Southey,  Esq.,  LL.D.,  Poet-laureate.  Illustrated  with  Engravings. 
8vo.  London,  1830. 
354 


southey's  edition  of  the  pilgrim's  progress.  355 

mense  vault.  We  miss,  too,  those  hideous  forms  which 
make  so  striking  a  part  of  the  description  of  Bunjan,  and 
which  Salvator  Rosa  would  have  loved  to  draw.  It  is  with 
unfeigned  diffidence  that  we  pronounce  judgment  on  any 
question  relating  to  the  art  of  painting.  But  it  appears  to 
us  that  Mr.  Martin  has  not  of  late  been  fortunate  in  his 
choice  of  subjects.  He  should  never  have  attempted  to 
illustrate  the  Paradise  Lost.  There  can  be  no  two  manners 
more  directly  opposed  to  each  other,  than  the  manner  of 
his  painting  and  the  manner  of  Milton^s  poetry.  Those 
things  which  are  mere  accessaries  in  the  descriptions, 
become  the  principal  objects  in  the  pictures;  and  those 
figures  which  are  most  prominent  in  the  descriptions  can  be 
detected  in  the  pictures  only  by  a  very  close  scrutiny.  Mr. 
Martin  has  succeeded  perfectly  in  representing  the  pillars 
and  candelabras  of  Pandemonium ;  but  he  has  forgotten 
that  Milton's  Pandemonium  is  merely  the  background  to 
Satan.  In  the  picture,  the  Archangel  is  scarcely  visible 
amidst  the  endless  colonnades  of  his  infernal  palace.  Mil- 
ton's Paradise,  again,  is  merely  the  background  to  his 
Adam  and  Eve.  But  in  Mr.  Martin's  picture,  the -landscape 
is  every  thing.  Adam,  Eve,  and  Raphael  attract  much  less 
notice  than  the  lake  and  the  mountains,  the  gigantic  flowers 
and  the  giraffes  which  feed  upon  them.  We  have  read,  we 
forget  where,  that  James  the  Second  sat  to  Yerelst,  the 
great  flower-painter.  When  the  performance  was  finished, 
his  Majesty  appeared  in  the  midst  of  sunflowers  and  tulips, 
which  completely  drew  away  all  attention  from  the  central 
figure.  All  who  looked  at  the  portrait  took  it  for  a  flower- 
piece.  Mr.  Martin,  we  think,  introduces  his  immeasurable 
spaces,  his  innumerable  multitudes,  his  gorgeous  prodigies 
of  architecture  and  landscape,  almost  as  unseasonably  as 
Yerelst  introduced  his  flower-pots  and  nosegays.  If  Mr. 
Martin  were  to  paint  Lear  in  the  storm,  the  blazing  sky, 
the  sheets  of  rain,  the  swollen  torrents,  and  the  tossing  fo- 
rest, would  draw  away  all  attention  from  the  agonies  of  the 
insulted  king  and  father.  If  he  were  to  paint  the  death  of 
Lear,  the  old  man,  asking  the  bystanders  to  undo  his  button, 
would  be  thrown  into  the  shade  by  a  vast  blaze  of  pavilions^ 
standards,  armour,  and  herald's  coats.  He  would  illustrate 
the  Orlando  Furioso  well,  the  Orlando  Innamorato  still  bet- 


356         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

ter,  the  Arabian  nights  best  of  all.  Fairy  palaces  and  gar- 
dens, porticoes  of  agate,  and  groves  flowering  with  emeralds 
and  rubies,  inhabited  by  people  for  whom  noboby  cares, 
these  are  his  proper  domain.  He  would  succeed  admira- 
bly in  the  enchanted  ground  of  Alcina,  or  the  mansion  of 
Aladdin.     But  he  should  avoid  Milton  and  Bunyan. 

The  characteristic  peculiarity  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress 
is,  that  it  is  the  only  work  of  its  kind  which  possesses  a 
strong  human  interest.  Other  allegories  only  amuse  the 
fancy.  The  allegory  of  Bunyan  has  been  read  by  many 
thousands  with  tears.  There  are  some  good  allegories  in 
Johnson's  works,  and  some  of  still  higher  merit  by  Addison. 
In  these  performances  there  is,  perhaps,  as  much  wit  and 
ingenuity  as  in  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  But  the  pleasure 
which  is  produced  by  the  Vision  of  Mirza,  or  the  Vision  of 
Theodore,  the  genealogy  of  Wit,  or  the  contest  between 
Best  and  Labour,  is  exactly  similar  to  the  pleasure  which  we 
derive  from  one  of  Cowley's  Odes,  or  from  a  Canto  of  Hu- 
dibras.  It  is  a  pleasure  which  belongs  wholly  to  the  un- 
derstanding, and  in  which  the  feelings  have  no  part  what- 
ever. Nay,  even  Spenser  himself,  though  assuredly  one  of 
the  greatest  poets  that  ever  lived,  could  not  succeed  in  the 
attempt  to  make  allegory  interesting.  It  was  in  vain  that 
he  lavished  the  riches  of  his  mind  on  the  House  of  Pride 
and  the  House  of  Temperance.  One  unpardonable  fault, 
the  fault  of  tediousness,  pervades  the  whole  of  the  Faerie 
Queen.  We  become  sick  of  Cardinal  Virtues  and  Deadly 
Sins,  and  long  for  the  society  of  plain  men  and  women. 
Of  the  persons  who  read  the  first  Canto,  not  one  in  ten 
reaches  the  end  of  thc\First  Book,  and  not  one  in  a  hun- 
dred perseveres  to  the  end  of  the  poem.  Very  few  and 
very  weary  are  those  who  are  in  at  the  death  of  the  Blatant 
Beast.  If  the  last  six  books,  which  are  said  to  have 
been  destroyed  in  Ireland,  had  been  preserved,  we  doubt 
whether  any  heart  less  stout  than  that  of  a  commentator 
would  have  held  out  to  the  end. 

It  is  not  so  with  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  That  wonderful 
book,  while  it  obtains  admiration  from  the  most  fastidious 
critics,  is  loved  by  those  who  are  too  simple  to  admire  it. 
Doctor  Johnson,  all  whose  studies  were  desultory,  and  who 
hated,  as  he  said,  to  read  books  through,  made  an  exception 


southet's  edition  of  pilgrim's  progress.      357 

in  favour  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.     That  work,  he  said, 
was  one  of  the  two  or  three  works  which  he  wished  longer. 
It  was  by  no  common  merit  that  the  illiterate  sectary  ex- 
tracted praise  like  this  from  the  most  pedantic  of  critics  and 
the  most  bigoted  of  Tories.     In  the  wildest  parts  of  Scotland 
the  PiloTim's  Progress  is  the  delight  of  the  peasantry.     In 
every  nursery  the  Pilgrim's  Progress  is  a  greater  favourite 
than  Jack  the  Giant-Killer.    Every  reader  knows  the  straight 
and  narrow  path,  as  well  as  he  knows  a  road  m  which  he 
has  gone  backward   and  forward  a  hundred  times.     This 
is  the  highest  miracle  of  genius— that  things  which  are  not 
should  be  as  though  they  were,  that  the  imaginations  of  one 
mind  should  become  the  personal  recollections  of  another. 
And  this  miracle  the  tinker  has  wrought.     There  is  no  as- 
cent, no  declivity,  no  resting-place,  no  turn-stile,  with  which 
we  are  not  perfectly  acquainted.     The  wicket-gate,  and  the 
desolate  swamp  which  separates  it  from  the  City  of  Destruc- 
tion; the  long  line  of  road,  as  straight  as  a  rule  can  make  it; 
the  Interpreter's  house,  and  all  its  fair  shows ;  the  prisoner 
in  the  iron  cage ;  the  palace,  at  the  doors  of  which  armed  men 
kept  guard,  and  on  the  battlements  of  which  walked  persons 
clothed  all  in  gold ;  the  cross  and  the  sepulchre ;  the  steep 
hill  and  the  pleasant  arbour;  the  stately  front  of  the  House 
Beautiful  by  the  wayside ;  the  low  green  valley  of  Humilia- 
tion, rich  with  grass  and  covered  with  flocks,  all  are  as  well 
known  to  us  as  the  sights  of  our  own  street.     Then  we  come 
to  the  narrow  place  where  Apollyon  strode  right  across  the 
whole  breadth  of  the  way,  to  stop  the  journey  of  Christian, 
and  where  afterwards  the  pillar  was  set  up  to  testify  how 
bravely  the  pilgrim  had  fought  the  good  fight.     As  we  ad- 
vance, the  valley  becomes  deeper  and  deeper.     The  shade 
of  the  precipices  on  both  sides  falls  blacker  and  blacker. 
The  clouds  gather  overhead.     Doleful  voices,  the  clanking 
of  chains,  and  the  rushing  of  many  feet  to  and  fro,  are 
heard  through  the  darkness.     The  way,  hardly  discernible 
in  gloom,  runs  close  by  the  mouth  of  the  burning  pit,  which 
sends  forth  its  flames,  its  noisome  smoke,  and  its  hideous 
shapes,  to   terrify  the   adventurer.      Thence   he  goes   on, 
amidst  the  snares  and  pitfalls,  with  the  mangled  bodies  of 
those  who  have  perished  lying  in  the  ditch  by  his  side.     At 
the  end  of  the  long  dark  valley,  he  passes  the  dens  m  which 


358         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

tlie  old  giants  dwelt,  amidst  the  bones  and  ashes  of  those 
whom  they  had  slain. 

Then  the  road  passes  straight  on  through  a  waste  moor, 
till  at  length  the  towers  of  a  distant  city  appear  before  the 
traveller;  and  soon  he  is  in  the  midst  of  the  innumerable 
multitudes  of  Vanity  Fair.  There  are  the  jugglers  and  the 
apes,  the  shops  and  the  puppet-shows.  There  are  Italian 
Row^  and  French  Row,  and  Spanish  Row,  and  Britain  Row, 
with  their  crowds  of  buyers,  sellers,  and  loungers,  jabbering 
all  the  languages  of  the  earth. 

Thence  we  go  on  by  the  little  hill  of  the  silver  mine,  and 
through  the  meadow  of  lilies,  along  the  bank  of  that  pleasant 
river  which  is  bordered  on  both  sides  by  fruit-trees.  On 
the  left  side,  branches  off  the  path  leading  to  that  horrible 
castle,  the  court-yard  of  which  is  paved  with  the  skulls  of 
pilgrims;  and  right  onward  are  the  sheepfolds  and  orchards 
of  the  Delectable  Mountains. 

From  the  Delectable  Mountains,  the  way  lies  through  the 
fogs  and  briers  of  the  Enchanted  Ground,  with  here  and 
there  a  bed  of  soft  cushions  spread  under  a  green  arbour. 
And  beyond  is  the  land  of  Beulah,  where  the  flowers, 
the  grapes,  and  the  songs  of  birds  never  cease,  and  where 
the  sun  shines  night  and  day.  Thence  are  plainly  seen 
the  golden  pavements  and  streets  of  pearl,  on  the  other 
side  of  that  black  and  cold  river  over  which  there  is  no 
bridge. 

All  the  stages  of  the  journey,  all  the  forms  which  cross  or 
overtake  the  pilgrims, — giants  and  hobgoblins,  ill-favoured 
ones,  and  shining  ones;  the  tall,  comely,  swarthy  Madam 
Bubble,  with  her  great  purse  by  her  side,  and  her  fingers 
playing  with  the  money ;  the  black  man  in  the  bright  ves- 
ture ;  Mr.  Worldly- Wiseman,  and  my  Lord  Hategood ;  Mr. 
Talkative,  and  Mrs.  Timorous — are  all  actually  existing 
beings  to  us.  We  follow  the  travellers  through  their  alle- 
gorical progress  with  interest  not  inferior  to  that  with  which 
we  follow  Elizabeth  from  Siberia  to  Moscow,  or  Jeanie 
Deans  from  Edinburgh  to  London.  Bunyan  is  almost  the 
only  writer  that  ever  gave  to  the  abstract  the  interest  of  the 
concrete.  In  the  works  of  many  celebrated  authors,  men 
are  mere  personifications.  We  have  not  an  Othello,  but 
jealousy ;  not  an  lago,  but  perfidy ;  not  a  Brutus,  but  patri- 


southey's  edition  or  pilgrim's  progress.      359 

otism.  Tlie  mind  of  Bunyaii;  on  the  contrary,  was  so  im- 
aginative, that  personifications,  when  he  dealt  with  them, 
became  men.  A  dialogue  between  two  qualities,  in  his 
dream,  has  more  dramatic  effect  than  a  dialogue  between 
two  human  beings  in  most  plays.  In  this  respect,  the  genius 
of  Bunyan  bore  a  great  resemblance  to  that  of  a  man  who 
had  very  little  else  in  common  with  him,  Percy  Bysshe 
Shelley.  The  strong  imagination  of  Shelley  made  him  an 
idolater  in  his  own  desjjite.  Out  of  the  most  indefinite  terms 
of  a  hard,  cold,  dark,  metaphysical  system,  he  made  a  gor- 
geous Pantheon,  full  of  beautiful,  majestic,  and  lifelike  forms. 
He  turned  atheism  itself  into  a  mythology,  rich  with  visions 
as  glorious  as  the  gods  that  live  in  the  marble  of  Phidias,  or 
the  virgin  saints  that  smile  on  us  from  the  canvas  of  Murillo. 
The  Spirit  of  Beauty,  the  Principle  of  Good,  the  Principle 
of  Evil,  when  he  treated  of  them,  ceased  to  be  abstractions. 
They  took  shape  and  colour.  They  were  no  longer  mere 
words;  but  '^intelligible  forms;"  '^  fair  humanities;'^  objects 
of  love,  of  adoration,  or  of  fear.  As  there  can  be  no  stronger 
signs  of  a  mind  destitute  of  the  poetical  faculty  than  that 
tendency,  which  was  so  common  among  the  writers  of  the 
French  school,  to  turn  images  into  abstractions — Venus,  for 
example,  into  Love,  Minerva  into  Wisdom,  Mars  into  War, 
and  Bacchus  into  Festivity — so  there  can  be  no  stronger 
sign  of  a  mind  truly  poetical,  than  a  disposition  to  reverse 
this  abstracting  process,  and  to  make  individuals  out  of 
generalities.  Some  of  the  metaphysical  and  ethical  theories 
of  Shelley  were  certainly  most  absurd  and  pernicious.  But 
we  doubt  whether  any  modern  poet  has  possessed  in  an 
equal  degree  the  highest  qualities  of  the  great  ancient  mas- 
ters. The  words  bard  and  inspiration,  which  seem  so  cold 
and  affected  when  applied  to  other  modern  wiiters,  have  a 
perfect  propriety  when  applied  to  him.  He  was  not  an 
author,  but  a  bard.  His  poetry  seems  not  to  have  been  an 
art,  but  an  inspiration.  Had  he  lived  to  the  full  age  of 
man,  he  might  not  improbably  have  given  to  the  world 
some  great  work  of  the  very  highest  rank  in  design  and 
execution.     But,  alas ! 

0  Aa'Pvii  £0a  poov  «Xuo-£  Siva 
TOP  Mowajf  <pi\oi/  avdpa,  tov  ov  T^ufjiipaiaiv  aTTtx^?}' 


S60  MACAULAY^S   MISCELLANEOUS   WRITINGS. 

But  we  must  return  to  Bunyan.  The  Pilgrim's  Progress 
undoubtedly  is  not  a  perfect  allegory.  The  types  are  often 
inconsistent  with  each  other;  and  sometimes  the  allegorical 
disguise  is  altogether  thrown  off.  The  river,  for  example, 
is  emblematic  of  death,  and  we  are  told  that  every  human 
being  must  pass  through  the  river.  But  Faithful  does  not 
pass  through  it.  He  is  martyred,  not  in  shadow,  but  in 
reality,  at  Vanity  Fair.  Hopeful  talks  to  Christian  about 
Esau's  birthright,  and  about  his  own  convictions  of  sin,  as 
Bunyan  might  have  talked  with  one  of  his  own  congregation. 
The  damsels  at  the  House  Beautiful  catechise  Christiana's 
boys,  as  any  good  ladies  might  catechise  any  boys  at  a 
Sunday-school.  But  we  do  not  believe  that  any  man, 
whatever  might  be  his  genius,  and  whatever  his  good  luck, 
could  long  continue  a  figurative  history  without  falling  into 
many  inconsistencies.  We  are  sure  that  inconsistencies, 
scarcely  less  gross  than  the  worst  into  which  Bunyan  has 
fallen,  may  be  found  in  the  shortest  and  most  elaborate  alle- 
gories of  the  Spectator  and  the  Rambler.  The  Tale  of  a 
Tub  and  the  History  of  John  Bull  swarm  with  similar  errors, 
if  the  name  of  error  can  be  properly  applied  to  that  which  is 
unavoidable.  It  is  not  easy  to  make  a  simile  go  on  all-fours. 
But  we  believe  that  no  human  ingenuity  could  produce  such 
a  centripede  as  a  long  allegory,  in  which  the  correspondence 
between  the  outward  sign  and  the  thing  signified  should  be 
exactly  preserved.  Certainly  no  writer,  ancient  or  modern, 
has  yet  achieved  the  adventure.  The  best  thing,  on  the 
whole,  that  an  allegorist  can  do,  is  to  present  to  his  readers 
a  succession  of  analogies,  each  of  which  may  separately  be 
striking  and  happy,  without  looking  very  nicely  to  see 
whether  they  harmonize  with  each  other.  This  Bunyan 
has  done ;  and,  though  a  minute  scrutiny  may  detect  incon- 
sistencies in  every  page  of  his  tale,  the  general  effect  which 
the  tale  produces  on  all  persons,  learned  and  unlearned, 
proves  that  he  has  done  well.  The  passages  which  it  is 
most  difficult  to  defend,  are  those  in  which  he  altogether 
drops  the  allegory,  and  puts  into  the  mouth  of  his  pilgrims 
religious  ejaculations  and  disquisitions,  better  suited  to  his 
own  pulpit  at  Bedford  or  Reading,  than  to  the  Enchanted 
Ground  of  the  Interpreter's  G-arden.  Yet  even  these  pas- 
sages, though  we  will  not  undertake  to  defend  them  against 


southey's  edition  of  pilgrim's  progress.      361 

the  objections  of  critics,  we  feel  that  we  could  ill  spare.    We 
feel  that  the  storj  owes  much  of  its  charms  to  these  occa- 
sional glimpses  of  solemn  and  affecting  subjects,  which  will 
not  be  hidden,  which  force  themselves  through  the  veil,  and 
appear  before  us  in  their  native  aspect.     The  effect  is  not 
unlike  that  which  is  said  to  have  been  produced  on  the  an- 
cient stage,  when  the  eyes  of  the  actor  were  seen  flaming 
through  his  mask,  and  giving  life  and  expression  to  what 
would  else  have  been  inanimate  and  uninteresting  disguise. 
It  is  very  amusing  and  very  instructive  to  compare  the 
Pilgrim's  Progress  with  the  Grace  Abounding.     The  latter 
work  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  remarkable  pieces  of  auto- 
bioo-raphy  in  the  world.     It  is  a  full  and  open  confession  of 
the'^fancies  which  passed  through  the  mind  of  an  illiterate 
man,  whose  affections  were  warm,  whose  nerves  were  irri- 
table, whose  imagination  was  ungovernable,  and  who  was 
under  the  influence  of  the  strongest  religious  excitement. 
In  whatever  age  Bunyan  had  lived,  the  history  of  his  feel- 
incrs  would,  in  all  probability,  have  been  very  curious.    But 
the  time  in  which  his  lot  was  cast  was  the  time  of  a  great 
stirring  of  the  human  mind.     A  tremendous  burst  of  public 
feeling,  produced  by  the  tyranny  of  the  hierarchy,  menaced 
the  old  ecclesiastical  institutions  with  destruction.     To  the 
eloomy  regularity  of  one  intolerant  church  had  succeeded 
the  license'^of  innumerable  sects,  drunk  with  the  sweet  and 
heady  must  of  their  new  liberty.     Fanaticism,  engendered 
by  persecution,  and  destined  to  engender  fresh  persecution 
in  turn,  spread  rapidly  through  society.     Even  the  strong- 
est and  most  commanding  minds  were  not  proof  against 
this  strange  taint.     Any  time  might  have  produced  George 
Fox  and  James  Naylor;  but  to  one  time  alone  belong  the 
frantic  delusions  of  such  a  statesman  as  Vane,  and  the  hys- 
terical tears  of  such  a  soldier  as  Cromwell. 

The  history  of  Bunyan  is  the  history  of  a  most  excitable 
mind  in  an  age  of  excitement.  By  most  of  his  biographers 
he  has  been  treated  with  gross  injustice.  They  have  under- 
stood in  a  popular  sense  all  those  strong  terms  of  sel^con- 
demnation  which  he  employed  in  a  theological  sense.  They 
have,  therefore,  represented  him  as  an  abandoned  wretcj, 
reclaimed  by  means  almost  miraculous;  or,  to  use  their  la- 
vourite  metaphor,  "  as  a  brand  plucked  from  the  burning. 
Vol.  I.— 31 


362        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Mr.  Ivimey  calls  him  the  depraved  Bunyan,  and  the  wick- 
ed tinker  of  Elstow.  Surely  Mr.  Ivimey  ought  to  have 
been  too  familiar  with  the  bitter  accusations  which  the  most 
pious  people  are  in  the  habit  of  bringing  against  themselves, 
to  understand  literally  all  the  strong  expressions  which  are 
to  be  found  in  the  Grace  Abounding.  It  is  quite  clear,  as 
Mr.  Southey  most  justly  remarks,  that  Mr.  Bunyan  never 
was  a  vicious  man.  He  married  very  early ;  and  he  solemnly 
declares  that  he  was  strictly  faithful  to  his  wife.  He  does 
not  appear  to  have  been  a  drunkard.  He  owns,  indeed, 
that  when  a  boy,  he  never  spoke  without  an  oath.  But  a 
single  admonition  cured  him  of  this  bad  habit  for  life ;  and 
the  cure  must  have  been  wrought  early :  for  at  eighteen 
he  was  in  the  army  of  the  Parliament ;  and  if  he  had  car- 
ried the  vice  of  profaneness  into  that  service,  he  would 
doubtless  have  received  something  more  than  an  admonition 
from  Sergeant  Bind-their-kings-in-chains,  or  Captain  Hew- 
Agag-in-pieces-before-the-Lord.  Bell-ringing  and  playing 
at  hockey  on  Sundays  seems  to  have  been  the  worst  vices 
of  this  depraved  tinker.  They  -would  have  passed  for 
virtues  with  Archbishop  Laud.  It  is  quite  clear  that,  from 
a  very  early  age,  Bunyan  was  a  man  of  a  strict  life,  and  of 
a  tender  conscience.  "  He  had  been/'  .says  Mr.  Southey, 
^'  a  blackguard.'^  Even  this  we  think  too  hard  a  censure. 
Bunyan  was  not,  we  admit,  so  fine  a  gentleman  as  Lord 
Digby ;  yet  he  was  a  blackguard  no  otherwise  than  as  every 
tinker  that  ever  lived  has  been  a  blackguard.  Indeed,  Mr. 
Southey  acknowledges  this :  '^  Such  he  might  have  been 
expected  to  be  by  his  birth,  breeding,  and  vocation.  Scarcely, 
indeed,  by  possibility  could  he  have  been  otherwise."  A 
man,  whose  manners  and  sentiments  are  decidedly  below 
those  of  his  class,  deserves  to  be  called  a  blackguard.  But 
it  is  surely  unfair  to  apply  so  strong  a  word  of  reproach  to 
one  who  is  only  what  the  great  mass  of  every  community 
must  inevitably  be. 

Those  horrible  internal  conflicts,  which  Bunyan  has  de- 
scribed with  so  much  power  of  language,  prove,  not  that  he 
was  a  worse  man  than  his  neighbours,  but  that  his  mind  was 
constantly  occupied  by  religious  considerations,  that  his 
fervour  exceeded  his  knowledge,  and  that  his  imagination 
exercised  despotic  power  over  his  body  and  mind.     He 


soothet's  edition  of  pilgrim's  progress.     363 

heard  voices  from  licaven;  he  saw  strange  yisions  of  distant 
h  Us,  pleasant  and  sunny  as  his  own  De  eetable  ^o—^j 
from   hose  seats  he  was  shut  out  and  placed  m  a  dark  and 
horrible  wilderness,  where  he  wandered  through  ice  and 
snow  striving  to  make  his  way  into  the  happy  region  of 
IfZ'     At  one  time  he  was  seized  with  an  inchnation  to 
t?rk  mitacles.     At  another  time  he  thought  himse  f  actu 
Xnossessed  by  the  devil;  he  could  distinguish  the  hlas- 
Kus  whispers;  he  felt  his  infernal  enemy  pulling  at  his 
olotherbrhind  him;  he  spurned  with  his  feet,  and  struck 
wtfhis  bands  at  the'  destroyer.    Sometimes  he  was  tempted 
to  sell  his  part  in  the  salvation  of  mankind      Spmetimes  a 
violent  impulse  urged  him  to  start  up  from  his  food,  to  tall 
rhis  knees  and  break  forth  into  prayer      A    length  he 
fancied  that  he  had  committed  the  unpardonable  sin ;  his 
r™nv  convulsed  his  robust  frame.     He  was,  he  says,  as  if 
r/reSone  would  split;  and  this  he  took  for  a  sign  4a^ 
he  was  destined  to  burst  asunder  like  Judas.    The  agitation 
of  his  nerves  made  all  his  movements  tremulous;  and  th  s 
?remblin<r,  he  supposed,  was  a  visible  mark  of  his  reproba- 
Lr  ike  that  which  had  been  set  on  Cam.     At  one  time, 
ndeed,  an  encouraging  voice  seemed  to  rush  m  at  the  win- 
dow, Uke  the  noise  of  wind,  but  very  pleasant   and  com- 
Zudei,  as  he  says,  a  great  calm  in  his  soul.     At  ariothe 
time    a  word  of  comfort  "was  spoke    oud  unto  him,  i 
shewed  a  great  word;  it  seemed  to  be  writ  in  grea   letters. 
But  these^intervals  of  ease  were  short.     His  state  during 
Two  years  and  a  half,  was  generally  the  most  horrible  tha 
he  human  mind  can  imagine.     "  I  walked,"  says  he   with 
his  own  peculiar  eloquence,  "to  a  neighbouring  town,  and 
sat  down  upon  a  settle  in  the  street,  and  fell  mo  a  very 
deep  pauseVit  the  most  fearful  state  my  sin  bad  brough 
me  to-  and  after  long  musing,  I  lifted  up  my  head;  but 
methou.ht  I  saw  as  if°the  sun-hat  shineth  in  the  heavens 
Sd  Hudge  to  give  me  light;  and  as  if  the  very  stones  in 
the  ftr  ets  and  tiles  up°on  ihe  houses  did  band  themselves 
again     me.     Methought  that  they  ^U  combined  together  to 
Sh  me  out  of  the°world !     I  was  abhorred  of  them,  and 
unfit  to  dwell  among  them,  because  I  had  sinned  against 
the  SaviouT-      Oh,  how  hap^y  now  was  every  creature  over 
I!  for  they  stood  fast  and  kept  their  station;  but  I  was 


864         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

gone  and  lost."  Scarcely  any  madhouse  could  produce  an 
instance  of  delusion  so  strong,  or  of  misery  so  acute. 

It  was  through  this  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death, 
overhung  by  darkness,  peopled  with  devils,  resounding  with 
blasphemy  and  lamentation,  and  passing  amidst  quagmires, 
snares,  and  pitfalls,  close  by  the  very  mouth  of  hell,  that 
Bunyan  journeyed  to  that  bright  and  fruitful  land  of  Beu- 
lah,  in  which  he  sojourned  during  the  latter  days  of  his 
pilgrimage.  The  only  trace  which  his  cruel  sufferings  and 
temptations  seem  to  have  left  behind  them,  was  an  affec- 
tionate compassion  for  those  who  were  still  in  the  state  in 
which  he  had  once  been.  Eoligion  has  scarcely  ever  worn 
a  form  so  calm  and  soothing  as  in  his  allegory.  The  feel- 
ing which  predominates  through  the  whole  book  is  a  feeling 
of  •  tenderness  for  weak,  timid,  and  harassed  minds.  The 
character  of  Mr.  Fearing,  of  Mr.  Feeble-Mind,  of  Mr.  De- 
spondency and  his  daughter  Miss  Muchafraid ;  the  account 
of  poor  Littlefaith,  who  was  robbed  by  the  three  thieves  of 
his  spending-money ;  the  description  of  Christian's  terror  in 
the  dungeons  of  Giant  Despair,  and  in  his  passage  through 
the  river,  all  clearly  show  how  strong  a  sympathy  Bunyan 
felt,  after  his  own  mind  had  become  clear  and  cheerful,  for 
persons  afflicted  with  religious  melancholy. 

Mr.  Southey,  who  has  no  love  for  the  Calvinists,  admits 
that,  if  Calvinism  had  never  worn  a  blacker  appearance  than 
in  Bunyan's  works,  it  would  never  have  become  a  term  of 
reproach.  In  fact,  those  works  of  Bunyan  with  which  we 
are  acquainted  are  by  no  means  more  Calvinistic  than  the 
homilies  of  the  Church  of  England.  The  moderation  of  his 
opinions  on  the  subject  of  predestination  gave  offence  to 
some  zealous  persons.  We  have  seen  an  absurd  allegory, 
the  heroine  of  which  is  named  Hephzibah,  written  by  some 
raving  snpralapsarian  preacher,  who  was  dissatisfied  with  the 
mild  theology  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  In  this  foolish 
book,  if  we  recollect  rightly,  the  Interpreter  is  called  the 
Enlightener,  and  the  House  Beautiful  is  Castle  Strength. 
Mr.  Southey  tells  us  that  the  Catholics  had  also  their  Pil- 
grim's Progress  without  a  Giant  Pope,  in  which  the  Inter- 
preter is  the  Director,  and  the  House  Beautiful  Grace's  Hall. 
It  is  surely  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  power  of  Bunyan's 
genius.  Ucat  two  religious  parties,  both  of  which  regarded 


southey's  edition  op  pilgrim's  progress.      365 

his  opinions  as  heterodox,  should  have  had  recourse  to  him 
for  assistance. 

There  are,  we  think,  some  characters  and  scenes  m  the 
Pilgrim's  Progress  which  can  be  fully  comprehended  and 
enjoyed  only  by  persons  familiar  with  the  history  of  the 
times  through  which  Bunyan  lived.  The  character  of  Mr. 
G-reatheart,  the  guide,  is  an  example.  His  fighting  is,  of 
course,  allegorical ;  but  the  allegory  is  not  strictly  preserv- 
ed. He  delivers  a  sermon  on  imputed  righteousness  to  his 
companions ;  and,  soon  after,  he  gives  battle  to  Giant  Grim, 
who  had  taken  upon  him  to  back  the  lions.  He  expounds 
the  fifty-third  chapter  of  Isaiah  to  the  household  and  guests 
of  Gains;  and  then  sallies  out  to  attack  Slay  good,  who  was 
of  the  nature  of  flesh-eaters,  in  his  den.  These  are  incon- 
sistencies; but  they  are  inconsistencies  which  add,  we  think, 
to  the  interest  of  the  narrative.  We  have  not  the  least 
doubt  that  Bunyan  had  in  view  some  stout  old  Greatheart 
of  Naseby  and  Worcester,  who  prayed  with  his  men  before 
he  drilled  them;  who  knew  the  spiritual  state  of  every 
dragoon  in  his  troop ;  and  who,  with  the  praises  of  God  in 
his  mouth,  and  a  two-edged  sword  in  his  hand,  had  turned 
to  flight  on  many  fields  of  battle  the  swearing,  drunken 
bravoes  of  Rupert  and  Lunsford. 

Every  age  produces  such  men  as  By-ends ;  but  the  mid- 
dle of  the  seventeenth  century  was  eminently  prolific  of  such 
men.  Mr.  Southey  thinks  that  the  satire  was  aimed  at  some 
particular  individual,  and  this  seems  by  no  means  impro- 
bable. At  all  events,  Bunyan  must  have  known  many  of 
those  hypocrites  who  followed  religion  only  when  religion 
walked  in  silver  slippers,  when  the  sun  shone,  and  when  the 
people  applauded.  Indeed,  he  might  have  easily  found  all 
the  kindred  of  By-ends  among  the  public  men  of  his  time. 
He  might  have  found  among  the  peers,  my  Lord  Turn-about, 
my  Lord  Time-server,  and  my  Lord  Fair -speech ;  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  Mr.  Smooth-man,  Mr.  Any-thing,  and 
Mr.  Facing-both-ways ;  nor  would  "  the  parson  of  the  parish, 
Mr.  Two-Tongues,"  have  been  wanting.  The  town  of  Bed- 
ford probably  contained  more  than  one  politician,  who,  after 
contriving  to  raise  an  estate  by  seeking  the  Lord  during  the 
reign  of  the  saints,  contrived  to  keep  what  he  had  got  by 
persecuting  the  saints  during  the  reign  of  the  strumpets , 

31* 


and  more  than  one  priest  wlio,  during  repeated  changes  in 
the  discipline  and  doctrines  of  the  church,  had  remained 
constant  to  nothing  but  his  benefice. 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  passages  in  the  Pilgrim's 
Progress  is  that  in  which  the  proceedings  against  Faithful 
are  described.  It  is  impossible  to  doubt  that  Bunyan  in- 
tended to  satirize  the  mode  in  which  state  trials  were  con- 
ducted under  Charles  the  Second.  The  license  given  to  the 
witnesses  for  the  prosecution,  the  shameless  partiality  and 
ferocious  insolence  of  the  judge,  the  precipitancy  and  the 
blind  rancour  of  the  jury,  remind  us  of  those  odious  mum- 
meries which,  from  the  Restoration  to  the  Kevolution,  were 
merely  forms  preliminary  to  hanging,  drawing,  and  quarter- 
ing. Lord  Hategood  performs  the  office  of  counsel  for  the 
prisoners  as  well  as  Scroggs  himself  could  have  performed  it. 

^^  Judge.  Thou  runagate,  heretic,  and  traitor,  hast  thou 
heard  what  these  honest  gentlemen  have  witnessed  against 
thee?- 

"  Faithful.  May  I  speak  a  few  words  in  my  own  de- 
fence ? 

"  Judge.  Sirrah,  sirrah !  thou  deservest  to  live  no  longer, 
but  to  be  slain  immediately  upon  the  place ;  yet,  that  all 
men  may  see  our  gentleness  to  thee,  let  us  hear  what  thou, 
vile  runagate,  hast  to  say." 

No  person  who  knows  the  state  trials  can  be  at  a  loss 
for  parallel  cases.  Indeed,  write  what  Bunyan  would,  the 
baseness  and  cruelty  of  the  lawyers  of  those  times  "  sinned 
up  to  it  still,''  and  even  went  beyond  it.  The  imaginary 
trial  of  Faithful  before  a  jury  composed  of  personified  vices 
was  just  and  merciful  when  compared  with  the  real  trial  of 
Lady  Alice  Lisle  before  that  tribunal  where  all  the  vices  sat 
in  the  person  of  Jeffries. 

The  style  of  Bunyan  is  delightful  to  every  reader,  and 
invaluable  as  a  stud}"-  to  every  person  who  wishes  to  obtain 
a  wide  command  over  the  English  language.  The  vocabu- 
lary is  the  vocabulary  of  the  common  people.  There  is  not 
an  expression,  if  we  except  a  few  technical  terms  of  theo- 
logy, which  would  puzzle  the  rudest  peasant.  We  have 
observed  several  pages  which  do  not  contain  a  single  word 
of  more  than  two  syllables ;  yet  no  writer  has  said  more 
exactly  what  he  meant  to  say.    For  magnificence,  for  pathos, 


southey's  edition  of  pilgrim^s  progress.      367 

for  vehement  exhortation,  for  subtle  disquisition,  for  every 
purpose  of  the  poet,  the  orator,  and  the  divine,  this  homely 
dialect,  the  dialect  of  plain  workingmen,  was  perfectly  suffi- 
cient. There  is  no  book  in  our  literature  on  which  we  could 
so  readily  stake  the  fame  of  the  old  unpolluted  English  lan- 
guage ;  no  book  which  shows  so  well  how  rich  that  language 
is  in  its  own  proper  wealth,  and  how  little  it  has  been  im- 
proved by  all  that  it  has  borrowed. 

Cowper  said,  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  that  he  dared  not 
name  John  Bunyan  in  his  verse,  for  fear  of  moving  a  sneer. 
To  our  refined  forefathers,  we  suppose  Lord  Roscommon's 
Essay  on  Translated  Yerse,  and  the  Duke  of  Buckingham- 
shire's Essay  on  Poetry,  appeared  to  be  compositions  infi- 
nitely superior  to  the  allegory  of  the  preaching  tinker.  We 
live  in  better  times;  and  we  are  not  afraid  to  say  that, 
though  there  were  many  clever  men  in  England  during  the 
latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  there  were  only  two 
great  creative  minds.  One  of  those  minds  produced  the 
Paradise  Lost,  the  other  the  Pilgrim's  Progress. 


APPE^TDix  TO  YOL.  I. 


A    POEM   WHICH    OBTAINED    THE    CHANCELLOR'S    3IEDAL    AT    THE 
CAMBRIDGE    C0M3IENCEMENT,    JULY,    1819. 

Oh  !  land  to  Memory  and  to  Freedom  dear, 
Land  of  the  melting  lyre  and  conquering  spear, 
Land  of  the  vine-clad  hill,  the  fragant  grove, 
Of  arts  and  arms,  of  Genius  and  of  Love, 
Hear,  fairest  Italy.     Though  now  no  more 
The  glittering  eagles  awe  the  Atlantic  shore, 
Nor  at  thy  feet  the  gorgeous  Orient  flings 
The  blood-bought  treasures  of  her  tawny  kings, 
Though  vanished  all  that  formed  thine  old  renown. 
The  laurel  garland,  and  the  jewelled  crown. 
The  avenging  poniard,  the  victorious  sword. 
Which  reared  thine  empire,  or  thy  rights  restored, 
Yet  still  the  constant  Muses  haunt  thy  shore. 
And  love  to  linger  where  they  dwelt  of  yore. 
If  e'er  of  old  they  deigned,  with  favouring  smile, 
To  tread  the  sea-girt  shores  of  Albion's  isle. 
To  smooth  with  classic  arts  our  rugged  tongue. 
And  warm  with  classic  glow  the  British  song, 
Oh  !  bid  them  snatch  their  silent  hearts  which  wave 
On  the  lone  oak  that  shades  thy  Maro's  grave,* 

^'  See  Eustace's  description  of  the  tomb  of  Virgil,  on  the  Nea 
politan  coast. 

369 


870         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

And  sweep  with  magic  hand  the  slumbering  strings, 
To  fire  the  poet. — For  thy  clime  he  sings, 
Thy  scenes  of  gay  delight  and  wild  despair, 
Thy  varied  forms  of  awful  and  of  fair. 

How  rich  that  climate's  sweets,  how  wild  its  storms, 
What  charms  array  it,  and  what  rage  deforms, 
Well  have  thy  mouldering  walls,  Pompeii,  known, 
Decked  in  those  charms,  and  by  that  rage  o'erthrown 
Sad  city,  gaily  dawned  thy  latest  day. 
And  poured  its  radiance  on  a  scene  as  gay. 
The  leaves  scarce  rustled  in  the  sighing  breeze; 
In  azure  dimples  ctirled  the  sparkling  seas, 
And  as  the  golden  tide  of  light  they  quaifed, 
Campania's  sunny  meads  and  vineyards  laughed, 
While  gleamed  each  lichened  oak  and  giant  pine 
On  the  far  sides  of  swarthy  Apennine. 
Then  mirth  and  music  through  Pompeii  rung; 
Then  verdant  wreaths  on  all  her  portals  hung ; 
Her  sons,  with  solemn  rite  and  jocund  lay, 
Hailed  the  glad  splendours  of  that  festal  day. 
With  fillets  bound  the  hoary  priests  advance, 
And  rosy  virgins  braid  the  choral  dance. 
The  rugged  warrior  here  unbends  awhile 
His  iron  front,  and  deigns  a  transient  smile ; 
There,  frantic  with  delight,  the  ruddy  boy 
Scarce  treads  on  earth,  and  bounds  and  laughs  with  joy 
From  every  crowded  altar  perfumes  rise 
In  billowy  clouds  of  fragrance  to  the  skies. 
The  milk-white  monarch  of  the  herd  they  lead. 
With  gilded  horns,  at  yonder  shrine  to  bleed ; 
And  while  the  victim  crops  the  broidered  plain, 
And  frisks  and  gambols  towards  the  destined  fane, 
They  little  deem  that  like  himself  they  sti-ay 
To  death,  unconscious,  o'er  a  flowery  way ; 
Heedless,  like  him,  the  impending  stroke  await. 
And  sport  and  wanton  on  the  brink  of  fate. 

What  ^  vails  it  that  where  yonder  heights  aspire, 
With  asbes  piled,  and  scathed  with  rills  of  fire, 
Grigantic  phantoms  dimly  seem  to  glide, 
In  misty  files,  along  the  mountain's  side, 


POMPEII.  371 


To  view  with  threatening  scowl  your  fated  lands 

And  toward  your  city  point  their  shadowy  hands  ?* 

In  vain  celestial  omens  prompted  fear, 

And  nature's  signal  spoke  the  ruin  neai-. 

In  vain  through  many  a  night  ye  viewed  from  far 

The  meteor  flag  of  elemental  war 

Unroll  its  blazing  folds  from  yonder  height, 

In  fearful  sign  of  earth's  intestine  fight. 

In  vain  Vesuvius  groaned  with  wrath  supprest, 

And  muttered  thunder  in  his  burning  breast. 

Long  since  the  Eagle  from  that  flaming  peak 

Hath  soared  with  screams  a  safer  nest  to  seek. 

Awed  by  the  infernal  beacon's  fitful  glare. 

The  howling  fox  hath  left  his  wonted  lair; 

Nor  dares  the  browzing  goat  in  venturous  leap 

To  spring,  as  erst,  from  dizzy  steep  to  steep. — 

Man  only  mocks  the  peril.     Man  alone 

Defies  the  sulphurous  flame,  the  warning  groan. 

While  instinct,  humbler  guardian,  wakes  and  saves, 

Proud  reason  sleeps,  nor  knows  the  doom  it  braves. 

But  see,  the  opening  theatre  invites 
The  fated  myriads  to  its  gay  delights. 
In,  in  they  swarm,  tumultuous  as  the  roar 
Of  foaming  breakers  on  a  rocky  shore. 
Th'  enraptured  throng  in  breathless  transport  views 
The  gorgeous  temple  of  the  Tragic  Muse. 
There,  while  her  wand  in  shadowy  pomp  arrays 
Ideal  scenes,  and  forms  of  other  days 
Fair  as  the  hopes  of  youth,  a  radiant  band, 
The  sister  arts  around  her  footstool  stand. 
To  deck  their  Qaeen,  and  lend  a  milder  grace 
To  the  stern  beauty  of  that  awful  face. 
Far,  far  around  the  ravished  eye  surveys 
The  sculptured  forms  of  gods  and  heroes  blaze. 


^  Dio  Cassius  relates  tkat  figures  of  gigantic  size  appeared,  for 
some  time  previous  to  the  destruction  of  Pompeii,  on  the  summits 
of  Vesuvius.  This  appearance  Avas  probably  occasioned  by  the 
fantastic  forms  which  the  smoke  from  the  crater  of  the  volcano 
assumed. 


372        macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Above,  the  echoing  roofs  the  peal  prolong 
Of  lofty  converse,  or  melodious  song, 
While,  as  the  tones  of  passion  sink  or  swell, 
Admiring  thousands  own  the  moral  spell. 
Melt  with  the  melting  strains  of  fancied  wo. 
With  terror  stricken,  or  with  transport  glow. 
Oh  !  for  a  voice  like  that  which  pealed  of  old 
Through  Salem's  cedar  courts  and  shrines  of  gold, 
And  in  wild  accents  round  the  trembling  dome 
Proclaimed  the  havoc  of  avenging  Rome ; 
While  every  palmy  arch  and  sculptured  tower 
Shook  with  the  footsteps  of  the  parting  power. 
Such  voice  might  check  your  tears,  which  idly  stream 
For  the  vain  phantoms  of  the  poet's  dream ; 
Might  bid  those  terrors  rise,  those  sorrows  flow. 
For  other  perils,  and  for  nearer  wo. 

The  hour  is  come.     Even  now  the  sulphurous  cloud 
Involves  the  city  in  its  funeral  shroud, 
And  far  along  Campania's  azure  sky 
Expands  its  dark  and  boundless  canopy. 
The  Sun,  though  throned  on  heaven's  meridian  height 
Burns  red  and  rayless  through  that  sickly  night. 
Each  bosom  felt  at  once  the  shuddering  thrill, 
At  once  the  music  stopped.     The  song  was  still. 
None  in  that  cloud's  portentous  shade  might  trace 
The  fearful  changes  of  another's  face. 
But  through  that  horrid  stillness  each  could  hear 
His  neighbour's  throbbing  heart  beat  high  with  fear. 

A  moment's  pause  succeeds.     Then  wildly  rise 
Grief's  sobbing  plaints  and  terror's  frantic  cries. 
The  gates  recoil ;  and  towards  the  narrow  pass 
In  wild  confusion  rolls  the  living  mass. 
Death — when  thy  shadow  sceptre  waves  away 
From  his  sad  couch  the  prisoner  of  decay. 
Though  friendship  view  the  close  with  glistening  eye, 
And  love's  fond  lips  imbibe  the  parting  sigh. 
By  torture  racked,  by  kindness  soothed  in  vain, 
The  soul  still  clings  to  being  and  to  pain. 
But  when  have  wider  terrors  clothed  thy  brow, 
Or  keener  torments  edged  thy  dart  than  now. 


POMPEII.  373 

W^v,ti  with  thy  regal  horrors  vainly  strove 
The  lii-w  of  nature  and  the  power  of  Love  ? 
On  motherb  babes  in  vain  for  mercy  call, 
Beneath  the  feet  of  brothers  brothers  fall. 
Behold  the  dying  wretch 'in  vain  upraise 
Towards  yonder  well-known  face  the  accusing  gaze ; 
See  trampled  to  the  earth  the  expiring  maid 
Clings  round  her  lover's  feet,  and  shrieks  for  aid. 
Vain  is  the  imploring  glance,  the  frenzied  cry ; 
All,  all  is  fear  ;  to  succour  is  to  die. — 
Saw  ye  how  wild,  how  red,  how  broad  a  light 
Burst  on  the  darkness  of  that  mid-day  night, 
As  fierce  Vesuvius  scattered  o'er  the  vale 
Her  drifted  flames  and  sheets  of  burning  hail, 
Shook  hell's  wan  lightnings  from  his  blazing  cone, 
And  gilded  heaven  with  meteors  not  its  own  ? 

The  morn  all  blushing  rose ;  but  sought  in  vain 
The  snowy  villas  and  the  flowery  plain. 
The  purpled  hills  with  marshalled  vineyards  gay, 
The  domes  that  sparkled  in  the  sunny  ray. 
Where  art  or  nature  late  hath  deck'd  the  scene  . 
With  blazing  marble  or  with  spangled  green, 
There,  streaked  by  many  a  fiery  torrent's  bed, 
A  boundless  waste  of  hoary  ashes  spread. 
Along  that  dreary  waste  where  lately  rung 
The  festal  lay  which  smiling  virgins  sung. 
Where  rapture  echoed  from  the  warbling  lute. 
And  the  gay  dance  resounded,  all  is  mute. — 
Mute  ! — Is  it  Fancy  shapes  that  wailing  sound 
Which  faintly  murmurs  from  the  blasted  ground, 
Or  live  there  still,  who  breathing  in  the  tomb. 
Curse  the  dark  refuge  which  delays  their  doom. 
In  massive  vaults,  on  which  the  incumbent  plain 
And  ruined  city  heap  their  weight  in  vain  ? 

Oh  !  who  may  sing  that  hour  of  mortal  strife. 
When  nature  calls  on  Death,  yet  clings  to  life  ? 
Who  paint  the  wretch  that  draws  sepulchral  breath. 
A  living  prisoner  in  the  house  of  Death  ? 
Pale  as  the  corpse  which  loads  the  funeral  pile, 
With  face  convulsed  that  writhes  a  ghastly  smile, 

Vot  I.— 32 


374         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Behold  him  speechless  move  with  hurried  pace, 
Incessant,  round  his  dungeon's  caverned  space, 
Now  shrink  in  terror,  and  now  groan  in  pain, 
Gnaw  his  white  lips  and  strike  his  burning  brain. 
Till  Fear  o'erstrained  in  stupor  dies  away. 
And  Madness  wrests  her  victim  from  dismay. 
His  arms  sink  down ;  his  wild  and  stony  eye 
Glares  without  sight  on  blackest  vacancy. 
He  feels  not,  sees  not :   wrapped  in  senseless  trance 
His  soul  is  still  and  listless  as  his  glance. 
One  cheerless  blank,  one  rayless  mist  is  there. 
Thoughts,  senses,  passions,  live  not  with  despair. 

Haste,  Famine,  haste,  to  urge  the  destined  close, 
And  lull  the  horrid  scene  to  stern  repose. 
Yet  ere,  dire  Fiend,  thy  lingering  tortures  cease, 
And  all  be  hushed  in  still  sepulchral  peace. 
Those  caves  shall  wilder,  darker  deeds  behold 
Than  e'er  the  voice  of  song  or  fable  told, 
"VVhate'er  dismay  may  prompt,  or  madness  dare, 
Feasts  of  the  grave,  and  banquets  of  despair. — 
Hide,  hide  the  scene ;  and  o'er  the  blasting  sight 
Fling  the  dark  veil  of  ages  and  of  night. 

Go,  seek  Pompeii  now; — with  pensive  tread 
Roam  through  the  silent  city  of  the  dead. 
Explore  each  spot,  where  still,  in  ruin  grand. 
Her  shapeless  piles  and  tottering  columns  stand, 
Where  the  pale  ivy's  clasping  wreaths  o'ershade 
The  ruined  temple's  moss-clad  colonnade. 
Or  violets  on  the  hearth's  cold  marble  wave. 
And  muse  in  silence  on  a  people's  grave. 

Fear  not. — No  sign  of  death  thine  eyes  shall  scare, 
No,  all  is  beauty,  verdure,  fragrance  there. 
A  gentle  slope  includes  the  fatal  ground 
With  odorous  shrubs  and  tufted  myrtles  crowned ; 
Beneath,  o'ergrown  with  grass,  or  wreathed  with  flowers, 
Lie  tombs  and  temples,  columns,  baths,  and  towers. 
As  if  in  mockery.  Nature  seems  to  dress 
In  all  her  charms  the  beauteous  wilderness. 
And  bids  her  gayest  flowrets  twine  and  bloom 
In  sweet  profusion  o'er  a  city's  tomb. 


POMPEII.  375 

Witli  roses  here  she  decks  the  untrodden  path, 
With  lilies  fringes  there  the  stately  bath ; 
The  acanthus"^  spreading  foliage  here  she  weaves 
Round  the  gay  capital  which  mocks  its  leaves ; 
There  hangs  the  sides  of  every  mouldering  room 
With  tapestry  from  her  own  fantastic  loom, 
Wallflowers  and  weeds,  whose  glowing  hues  supply 
With  simple  grace  the  purple's  Tyrian  dye. 
The  ruined  city  sleeps  in  fragrant  shade. 
Like  the  pale  corpse  of  some  Athenian  maid,f 
Whose  marble  arms,  cold  brows,  and  snowy  neck 
The  fairest  flowers  of  fairest  climates  deck. 
Meet  types  of  her  whose  form  their  wreaths  array, 
Of  radiant  beauty,  and  of  swift  decay. 

Advance,  and  wander  on  through  crumbling  halls, 
Through  prostrate  gates  and  ivied  pedestals. 
Arches,  whose  echoes  now  no  chariots  rouse. 
Tombs,  on  whose  summits  goats  undaunted  browse. 
See  where  yon  ruined  wall  on  earth  reclines. 
Through  weeds  and  moss  the  half-seen  painting  shines, 
Still  vivid  midst  the  dewy  cowslips  grows. 
Or  blends  its  colours  with  the  blushing  rose. 
Thou  lovely,  ghastly  scene  of  fair  decay. 
In  beauty  awful,  and  midst  horrors  gay. 
Renown  more  wide,  more  bright  shall  gild  thy  name, 
Than  thy  wild  charms  or  fearful  doom  could  claim. 
Immortal  spirits,  in  whose  deathless  song 
Latium  and  Athens  yet  their  reign  prolong. 
And  from  their  thrones  of  fame  and  empire  hurled, 
Still  sway  the  sceptre  of  the  mental  world, 
You  in  whose  breasts  the  flames  of  Pindus  beamed. 
Whose  copious  lips  with  richer  persuasion  streamed, 
Whose  minds  unravelled  nature's  mystic  plan, 
Or  traced  the  mazy  labyrinth  of  man : 


•^  The  capital  of  the  Corinthian  pillar  is  carved,  as  is  well 
known,  in  imitation  of  the  acanthus.  Mons.  de  Chauteaubriand, 
as  I  have  found  since  this  Poem  was  written,  has  employed  the 
same  image  in  his  Travels. 

j-  It  is  the  custom  of  the  modern  Greeks  to  adorn  corpses  pro- 
fusely with  flowers. 


876         macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

Bend,  glorious  spirits,  from  your  blissful  bowers, 
And  broidered  couches  of  unfading  flowers, 
While  round  your  locks  the  Elysian  garlands  blow 
With  sweeter  odours,  and  with  brighter  glow. 
Once  more,  immortal  shades,  atoning  Fame 
Eepairs  the  honours  of  each  glorious  name. 
Behold  Pompeii's  opening  vaults  restore 
The  long-lost  treasures  of  your  ancient  lore, 
The  vestal  radiance  of  poetic  fire, 
The  stately  buskin  and  the  tuneful  lyre, 
The  wand  of  eloquence,  whose  magic  sway 
The  sceptres  and  the  swords  of  earth  obey, 
And  every  mighty  spell,  whose  strong  control 
Could  nerve  or  melt,  could  fire  or  soothe  the  soul. 

And  thou,  sad  city,  raise  thy  drooping  head. 
And  share  the  honours  of  the  glorious  dead. 
Had  Fate  reprieved  thee  till  the  frozen  North 
Poured  in  wild  swarms  its  hoarded  millions  forth, 
Till  blazing  cities  marked  where  Albion  trod, 
Or  Europe  quaked  beneath  the  scourge  of  God,^ 
No  lasting  wreath  had  graced  thy  funeral  pall. 
No  fame  redeemed  the  horrors  of  thy  fall. 
Now  shall  thy  deathless  memory  live  entwined 
With  all  that  conquers,  rules,  or  charms  the  mind. 
Each  lofty  thought  of  Poet  or  of  Sage, 
Each  grace  of  Virgil's  lyre  or  Tully's  page. 
Like  theirs  whose  genius  consecrates  thy  tomb. 
Thy  fame  shall  snatch  from  time  a  greener  bloom. 
Shall  spread  where'er  the  Muse  has  rear'd  her  throne. 
And  live  renowned  in  accents  yet  unknown; 
Earth's  utmost  bounds  shall  join  the  glad  acclaim. 
And  distant  Camus  bless  Pompeii's  name. 

*  The  well-known  name  of  Attila. 


[KnigJifs  Quarterly  Magazine.] 


rHenry  the  Fourth,  on  his  accession  to  the  French  crown,  was  opposed  by  a  larRe 
part  of  his  subjects  under  the  Duke  of  Mayenne,  with  the  assistance  of  Spam 
and  Savoy.  In  March,  1590,  he  gained  a  decisive  victory  over  that  party  at 
Ivry.  Before  the  battle,  ho  addressed  his  troops—"  My  children,  if  you  lose  sight 
of  your  colours,  rally  to  my  white  plume— you  will  always  find  it  in  the  path 
to  honour  and  glory."  Uis  conduct  was  answerable  to  his  promise.  ISothmg 
could  resist  his  impetuous  valour,  and  the  leaguers  underwent  a  total  and 
bloody  defeat.  In  the  midst  of  the  rout,  Henry  followed,  crying— "Save  the 
French'"  and  his  clemency  added  a  number  of  the  enemies  to  his  own  army. 

Aikiii's  Biographical  Dictionary. \ 


Now  glory  to  the  Lord  of  Hosts,  from  -wliom  all  glories  are ! 
And  glory  to  our  Sovereign  Liege,  King  Henry  of  Nayarre ! 
Now  let  there  be  the  merry  sound  of  music  and  the  dance, 
Through  thy  cornfields  green,  and  sunny  vines,  oh!  pleasant  land 

of  France. 
And  thou,  Rochelle,  our  own  Eochelle,  proud  city  of  the  waters, 
Again  let  rapture  light  the  eyes  of  all  thy  mourning  daughters. 
As  thou  wert  constant  in  our  ills,  he  joyous  in  our  joy, 
For  cold,  and  stiff,  and  still  are  they  who  wrought  thy  walls  annoy 
Hurrah !  hurrah !  a  single  field  hath  turned  the  chance  of  war ; 
Hurrah !  hurrah !  for  Ivry  and  King  Henry  of  Navarre. 

Oh !  how  our  hearts  were  heating,  when,  at  the  dawn  of  day, 
We  saw  the  army  of  the  League  drawn  out  in  long  array ; 
"With  all  its  priest-led  citizens,  and  all  its  rebel  peers, 
And  Appenzel's  stout  infantry,  and  Egmont's  Flemish  spears. 
There  rode  the  brood  of  false  Lorraine,  the  curses  of  our  land, 
And  dark  Mayenne  was  in  the  midst,  a  truncheon  in  his  hand ; 
And  as  we  looked  on  them,  we  thought  of  Seine's  empurpled  flood, 
And  good  Coligni's  hoary  hair  all  dabbled  with  his  blood  ; 
And  we  cried  unto  the  living  God,  who  rules  the  fate  of  war, 
To  fight  for  his  own  holy  name  and  Henry  of  Navarre. 

The  King  is  come  to  marshal  us,  in  all  his  armour  drest, 
And  he  has  bound  a  snow-white  plume  upon  his  gallant  crest ; 
He  looked  upon  his  people,  and  a  tear  was  in  his  eye ; 
He  looked  upon  the  traitors,  and  his  glance  was  stern  and  high. 
Rio-ht  graciously  he  smiled  on  us,  as  rolled  fr)m  wing  to  wing, 
Down  all  our  line,  in  deafening  shout,  "  God  save  our  lord,  the 


878  macaulay's  miscellaneous  writings. 

'*  And  if  my  stai.dard-hearer  fall,  as  fall  full  well  lie  may— 
For  never  saw  I  promise  3'et  of  such  a  bloody  fray — 
Press  where  yc  see  my  white  plume  shine,  amidst  the  ranks  of  war 
And  be  your  oriflamme  to-day  the  helmet  of  Navarre." 

Hurrah !  the  foes  are  moving.     Hark  to  the  mingled  din 
Of  fife,  and  steed,  and  trump,  and  drum,  and  roaring  culverin! 
The  fiery  Duke  is  pricking  fast  across  St.  Andre's  plain, 
With  all  the  hireling  chivalry  of  Guelders  and  Almayne. 
Now  by  the  lips  of  those  ye  love,  fair  gentlemen  of  France, 
Charge  for  the  golden  lilies  now  upon  them  with  the  lance ! 
A  thousand  spurs  are  striking  deep,  a  thousand  spears  in  rest, 
A  thousand  knights  are  pressing  close  behind  the  snow-white  crest; 
And  in  they  burst,  and  on  they  rushed,  while,  like  a  guiding  star, 
Amidst  the  thickest  carnage  blazed  the  helmet  of  Navarre. 

Now,  God  be  praised,  the  day  is  ours !     Mayenne  hath  turned 

his  rein, 
D'Aumale  hath  cried  for  quarter,  the  Flemish  Count  is  slain. 
Their  ranks  are  breaking  like  thin  clouds  before  a  Biscay  gale ; 
The  field  is  heaped  with  bleeding  steeds,  and  flags,  and  cloven 

mail; 
And  then  we  thought  on  vengeance,  and  all  along  our  van, 
*'  Remember  St.  Bartholomew,"  was  passed  from  man  to  man; 
But  out  spake  gentle  Henry  then,  "  No  Frenchman  is  my  foe; 
Down,  down  with  every  foreigner,  but  let  your  brethren  go." 
Oh !  was  there  ever  such  a  knight  in  friendship  or  in  war. 
As  our  sovereign  lord,  King  Henry,  the  soldier  of  Navarre. 

Ho  !  maidens  of  Vienna, — ho  !  matrons  of  Luzerne, 
Weep,  weep,  and  rend  your  hair  for  those  who  never  shall  return. 
Ho  !  Philip,  send  for  charity,  thy  Mexican  pistoles. 
That  Antwerp  monks  may  sing  a  mass  for  thy  poor  spearmen's 

souls. 
Ho  !  gallant  nobles  of  the  League,  look  that  your  arms  be  bright ; 
Ho !  burghers  of  St.  Gdndvibve,  keep  watch  and  ward  to-night ; 
For  our  God  hath  crushed  the  tyrant,  our  God  hath  raised  the 

slave. 
And  mocked  the  counsel  of  the  wise  and  the  valour  of  the  brave. 
Then  glory  to  his  holy  name,  from  whom  all  glories  are  ; 
And  glory  to  our  sovereign  lord,  King  Henry  of  Navarre. 


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